Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in Benhilton

Yes. Benhilton is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SM1. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Sutton. Block paving bedded on sand can rut under a fully loaded van, and that is said to the customer beforehand rather than explained afterwards. A vanity fit is a short visit with one or two pieces in it, so the van stands only for as long as it takes to walk them in. One trip in with the top, the shelves and the adhesive. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The kitchen occupies the ground floor of the addition with a garden door at the far end, so there is a second way in that is narrower than the front door and a great deal shorter. The bathroom in one of these is almost never original: it is a later room over the back addition, or a bedroom divided in two. What the wall is made of decides how the unit is fixed. Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. A vanity has no depth to lose, so where a kitchen run would take a ten millimetre scribe without noticing, a shallow top cannot spare it. The tap has to clear the reveal before the hole is drilled.

Where the staircase comes down into the hall the bottom treads project into the width, and nothing about that can be moved for the day. A vanity is the one piece of stone that route will not usually defeat, because a top cut to a standard unit depth weighs what one person can manage. A cloakroom under the stairs is a short carry into a tight room. Where the drive is shared, the half-hour the van spends in the way is agreed with the neighbour in advance rather than apologised for at the time. Where the van cannot wait, the top, the shelves and the adhesive all come in on the first trip and the van goes. The van waits while a kitchen goes in, not while a basin does.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Work of that kind brings en-suites with it, and an en-suite vanity is a smaller piece again carrying exactly the same four operations. Small tops are where a slab finally gets fully used. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. Where several bathrooms are done in one building the tops come off one slab run, because two greys from two batches sit badly on adjoining floors. The vanity is the piece that makes a converted flat read finished.

The walkway between the two runs is fixed by the units either side, so any overhang added to one worktop comes straight off the space somebody has to stand in. That shape decides what is left on the slab when the kitchen has been cut, and what is left on the slab is where most vanity tops come from. A veined vanity is nested for what shows above the basin. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. The boxed soil stack in the corner is the usual version of it upstairs, and a top that notches round one loses depth exactly where the basin wanted it. A pipe boxing gets a radiused notch, never a square one. Have the vanity unit fixed and levelled, and the basin and tap on site, before the templater arrives, and tell us what is inside any boxing. Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. Who is paying decides the material here more than anywhere else, because a vanity is small enough that an expensive stone stops being an expensive decision. Whoever signs it off is whoever chooses the basin.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. A tiled hall floor takes a dropped corner badly, so boards go down over the tiles before anything comes through the door. The exception is a double vanity, which is a kitchen length in bathroom width and behaves like a worktop from the tail lift onwards. Small pieces still get crated, because small pieces get dropped.

If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. A step up from the drive to the threshold turns the last two metres into a lift, and a lift is where two pairs of hands become the minimum. A bathroom booked on its own rarely fills a day, so it can be put into whichever part of the day the street is easiest. A bathroom slot is booked short and kept short.

Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. Every internal doorway on the way through is another frame to clear, and internal doors come off their hinges rather than being propped open. A top with the basin aperture already cut has very little holding it together, so it travels flat on a board rather than on edge the way a worktop does. The way into a bathroom ends at a door that opens inward.

Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. The chimney breast has almost always been taken out of the kitchen with the stack left standing above it, so that bay of wall is newer plasterwork on a different plane. Where a bedroom has been divided to make a bathroom the window sits off centre to the new room and the vanity ends up under it, which puts the window board in the order rather than outside it. The bathroom in a house like this is rarely where it started.