Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in Bloomsbury

Yes. Bloomsbury is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are WC1. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. A single red line has hours and a double red line does not, and the difference decides whether an early start is a plan or a penalty. 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. Tap holes are drilled at the works, so nothing keeps the van waiting. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

Cornice runs round the head of the wall, so the wall units stop under it and the splashback band is trapped between two things that are not going to move. 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. Where the floor is solid, the unit sits where it is put. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. Bathrooms carry the same problems in a smaller room, and a smaller room leaves a vanity nowhere to absorb them. The scribe on a vanity is measured in depth it cannot spare.

The measurement that decides everything is the diagonal between the underside of the flight above and the outer edge of the turn below it. 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 cut top is weaker than an uncut one, so it travels differently. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. 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. The basin travels in the van with the top it belongs to.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. 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. Where every bathroom matches, one slab covers the building. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. 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. A landlord specifying once is specifying tap holes once.

A doorway partway along one wall breaks that side into two separate pieces, and two short pieces cost more between them than the single long one they replace. 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. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. 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 sloping floor is corrected under the unit, not under the stone. 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. One staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. 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. A void week is the easiest slot for a bathroom.

A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. Handles on opposing runs meet in the middle of the aisle, so a deep edge profile specified on both sides takes width out of the standing space twice over. Where the kitchen swallows the whole slab there is no offcut worth having, and the vanity then has to be priced against material bought for itself. Two bathrooms nest better together than either does alone.

A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. The chimney breast is usually still standing with the opening blocked up, and the alcoves either side of it are rarely the same width as each other. Either way the walls are thin, the floor is boards over shallow joists and nothing meets at a right angle, so the vanity is scribed at both ends and the unit is fixed back to the wall as well as standing on the floor. An original bathroom is usually the smallest room upstairs.

A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. A top-floor conversion puts part of the kitchen under the slope of the roof, so the wall behind the run stops at head height along one side of the room. The bathroom in one of these is usually a later addition over the back kitchen, so the walls are thinner, the floor moves and a vanity has to sit level in a room that is not. Half tiling leaves a line the splash return has to meet.

The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. The original front door is narrow and the hall is often the only way in, which puts a ceiling on the longest single piece. What that does to a vanity is push the whole job into a narrow depth, because a bathroom takes the same stone as a kitchen in about two thirds of the width. A vanity top is a small piece with a great deal drilled through it.