Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in Bunhill

Yes. Bunhill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC1Y, EC2A. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Islington. 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 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. The basin travels in the van with the top it belongs to. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

Many of these kitchens are a fitted pod dropped into open floor, so three sides are free and only the fourth is ever scribed. Bathrooms in these buildings are pods built inside the shell, so the walls are new square studwork and the room was set out on paper rather than inherited. Old pipework is boxed rather than moved, and the top notches round it. Encased steel is always bigger than the steel inside it, so the casing is what gets plotted, and a casing is rarely square to the wall it sits against. Bathrooms carry the same problems in a smaller room, and a smaller room leaves a vanity nowhere to absorb them. The bridge between aperture and back edge is what a notch eats.

A car that answers every floor button pressed while a piece is standing in it needs to be held on the key, and the key usually lives at a desk that wants notice. 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 goes wherever a person will go. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. Where the van cannot wait, the top, the shelves and the adhesive all come in on the first trip and the van goes. A second visit for a splash return is one we would rather avoid.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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. Several vanity tops off one slab run, or they will not match. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. A house divided into flats needs a vanity for each of them, and small repeated pieces are the one case where buying a whole slab makes sense. An en-suite is the same four operations at a smaller size.

Knee room under a breakfast bar is measured from the face of the cabinets rather than from the edge of the stone, so a deep apron quietly eats the depth somebody actually gets to sit 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 cloakroom top is the easiest piece on any nesting plan. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

A brick pier standing into the run divides it in two, and the join goes against the pier where a clear wall would have needed no join at all. 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 wall-hung unit is braced before it is asked to hold stone. Confirm what is behind the board where the unit hangs, and send the goods lift and door dimensions if the pieces include shelving. Access in a tenanted flat depends on the tenant, so the template and fitting dates are agreed with whoever actually holds the keys. 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. Owner bathrooms get the slab viewed; let ones get the sample.

Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. Where the structure cannot be cut into, the stone is relieved instead, and a relief that deep changes both the yield off the slab and how the piece is handled. 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. Where the wall bows, the splash return is scribed to follow it.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. Original brickwork is uneven by ten millimetres or more across a bay, so the back edge is scribed to the actual face rather than to a line. Bathrooms in these are pods built inside the shell, so the walls are new square studwork and the vanity is drawn to a room that was set out on paper. Square rooms make short work of a vanity template.

The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. Open plan means long uninterrupted runs and an island in the middle of the room with every edge on show. 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. The stone is the simple half of a bathroom fit.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. Three stools along one side need more clear length than most plans allow, and once the seating depth is fixed the piece either grows or it loses a seat. A bathroom ordered with the kitchen is taken from the same slab run, so the two rooms match rather than nearly match. Yield is why a vanity in a rare stone is still affordable.