We do not price vanity tops in Brunswick Park without seeing the kitchen first, and the reason for that is in the rooms themselves. Quiet interwar and post-war family housing on closes and cul-de-sacs, with kitchens that are usually the original size and a modest rear or side addition at most. Typical job is a straight L of 3m plus 1.8m keeping the existing units, with new upstands and a window board in the same material. Neither case is harder than the other for us. Both start with somebody standing in the kitchen with a tape.
The original plan put a larder and a back door on the same wall, and both leave awkward stubs once the room is opened up. A vanity top is where all of that turns up in miniature, with the basin, the tap holes and a splash return crowded into a few hundred millimetres of stone. It is the smallest piece we cut and the most crowded.
The chimney breast served a back boiler and is usually still standing, so there is a shallow recess on one side of the room. Half-tiled walls are the norm, and the tile line is what the splash return has to meet, which is a decision taken before machining rather than discovered afterwards. Loft en-suites lose their splash return to the slope.
Around here the stock is 1930s semi, post-war cul-de-sac housing and 1960s low-rise flat. They were built to different tolerances, and the stone has to absorb that.
Figures cover the statistical area (MSOA) that contains Brunswick Park| Figure | Brunswick Park | Against London | What it means for the job |
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| homes built before 1919 | 16% | pre-1919 share lower than 57% of the 723 areas we cover | |
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| homes built since 2010 | 4% | post-2010 share lower than 69% of the 723 areas we cover | No two kitchens are set out alike. |
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| households in a converted or shared house | 4% | converted-house share lower than 61% of the 723 areas we cover | |
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Sources: VOA Council Tax Stock of Properties 2025 and ONS Census 2021 for MSOA E02000033. Open Government Licence v3.0.