Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in Cranham

Yes. Cranham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM14. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. Having the van on the drive means the load can be staged, so the heavy pieces come off last and go straight in instead of standing outside. 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 cloakroom top is a single armful off the tail lift. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A boiler in a cupboard on the kitchen wall is normal in this stock, and its position is fixed by its flue. The bathroom is the small room over the kitchen, and the waste already runs where it needs to, so the basin position is more or less settled before anyone draws anything. What the wall is made of decides how the unit is fixed. Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. Bathrooms carry the same problems in a smaller room, and a smaller room leaves a vanity nowhere to absorb them. The unit is packed level before the top goes near it.

The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. 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. An en-suite off a bedroom adds a second flight, not a second job. A dropped kerb wide enough for a car is not always wide enough for a long-wheelbase van, and the width of the crossing decides the rest. 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 moves on. The fitter stays with the vanity.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop design & quotation and worktop replacement. That says something about the housing round here, not about the work. Quote, cut and fit are the same here as on any other part of the patch. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. 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. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. 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 two returns in a U are close to the same size and it is tempting to nest them side by side, except that the veining then mirrors across the room and reads as deliberate for the wrong reason. 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 bathroom pieces are labelled on the nest before the saw runs. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. 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 boxed soil stack takes depth from where the basin wants it. Measure from the finished unit up to the underside of the window sill and send it with the basin and tap models. Someone who expects to still be there in ten years asks different questions: how a honed finish marks, what a sealer does and does not do, and whether a chip by the sink can be repaired in place. 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.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. Ceiling heights dropped after the war, so there is less wall between the worktop and the wall units than in anything older. Windows sit low over the basin in these houses, and that window caps the height of any splash return before the rest of the room is even considered. The bathroom in a house like this is rarely where it started.

A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. Three runs is three scribes and three separate lifts, so a U takes longer on site than its metreage suggests even on a day when nothing goes wrong. A bathroom ordered with the kitchen is taken from the same slab run, so the two rooms match rather than nearly match. What the kitchen cannot use, the vanity usually can.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Post-war terraces have a short straight hall to the kitchen, which is a good deal kinder than the houses they replaced. The bathroom is the small room over the kitchen, and the waste already runs where it needs to, so the basin position is more or less settled before anyone draws it. Boarded floors give, and a vanity shows it at the tile line.

The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. Taking the old tops off and disposing of them is its own line on the quote rather than something folded into the stone price. Where a car has to come off the drive first, it is worth knowing whose car it is and whether the keys are in the house on the morning. 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. Ordered with the kitchen, the bathroom costs no extra journey.