Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in Bow Common

Yes. Bow Common is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E3, E14. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Tower Hamlets. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. 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. A bay for twenty minutes is enough for a vanity. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

Infill plots usually put the kitchen at the back with wide doors to a small garden, and that opening is the best route in. Bathrooms in these are square, plumb and finished before anyone moves in, so the template is short work and the whole question becomes what the unit is fixed to. A separate WC becomes a cloakroom with a very small top. 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. Bathrooms carry the same problems in a smaller room, and a smaller room leaves a vanity nowhere to absorb them. The tap has to clear the reveal before the hole is drilled.

Concierge buildings want the goods entrance, a booked lift and proof of insurance, all of which is straightforward when it is asked for a week out. 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 vanity top is lifted once and set down once. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. 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. We arrive with the offcut pieces already labelled by room.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands. That is the local housing talking rather than anything about the job. It is priced, cut and fitted no differently here than anywhere else we cover. Housings and integrated appliances are set out for a 38mm laminate top, so dropping to 20mm or 30mm stone changes the clearances and needs checking before anything is cut. 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. Repeat bathrooms come cheaper per top, not per square metre. Upgrading a builder-finish kitchen is mostly a swap, so the cost sits in the material choice rather than in the shape of the room. 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 converted house needs a vanity on every floor.

The return piece is the awkward one on a slab: short, full depth, and rarely nesting neatly against the long lengths, so yield rather than area is what moves the material figure. 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. The offcut decides the colour more often than the brochure does. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. 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. A pipe boxing gets a radiused notch, never a square one. Confirm the unit depth for each bathroom separately, book the lift if the building wants it booked, and have both taps on site. Consent for the work sits with the freeholder or the managing body, and getting it in writing first avoids a crew arriving to a locked door. A let bathroom wants quartz for the same reason a let kitchen does: nothing to seal, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be briefed on. Durability wins in a let bathroom, and it should.

Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. 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. The bridge between aperture and back edge is what a notch eats.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. An L can be mitred at the corner for a continuous look or butt-jointed over the gable, and the two are different money and different risk. A bathroom ordered with the kitchen is taken from the same slab run, so the two rooms match rather than nearly match. A veined vanity is nested for what shows above the basin.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. 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. The house is designed to the width it was allowed, so the kitchen is long and narrow and the run has no real choice about where it goes. Partition walls are plasterboard on studs, and a wall-hung vanity carrying stone wants timber behind the board rather than fixings into plasterboard alone. Old pipework is boxed rather than moved, and the top notches round it.

Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. Rooflights over the rear bring light straight down onto the worktop, which shows a polished finish and any step at a join. Bathrooms in these are square, plumb and finished before anyone moves in, so the template is short work and the question moves to what the unit is fixed to. Square rooms make short work of a vanity template.