Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in Cricklewood

Yes. Cricklewood is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW2. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Brent. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. 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. Short jobs suffer most from a van that has to move. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The flats are stacked identically, so the kitchen above sits directly over this one and its waste passes through the same boxing. A bathroom in a block like this was usually carved out of a larger room, so the proportions are odd, the ceiling is high and the window reveals are deep enough to be worth cutting in stone. Older walls give a vanity nothing straight to sit against. 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. Bathrooms carry the same problems in a smaller room, and a smaller room leaves a vanity nowhere to absorb them. Where the wall bows, the splash return is scribed to follow it.

A fitted stair carpet is either lifted or covered, because grit trodden into it under work boots does more harm than the carry itself. 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 double vanity is a worktop as far as the carry is concerned. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. Where the van cannot wait, the top, the shelves and the adhesive all come in on the first trip and the van goes. The whole bathroom fits on a trolley in one load.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands. 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. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. 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. The bathroom schedule follows the plumber, not the programme. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. 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. A building turned over floor by floor needs the batch held.

Two runs of similar length nest as a pair off one slab, and if one of them grows by a few hundred millimetres the pair stops fitting and the yield changes for both. 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. Small pieces are drawn onto the plan, never left to chance. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

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. 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 basin cannot be moved to suit a wall that is out of true. Confirm the block working hours and any porter sign-in, and have the plumber agree the waste position before we template. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. 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. Toiletries do more to a bathroom top than water ever will.

The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. 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. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. 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 waste position is fixed before the aperture is drawn.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. The lift is a small passenger car with a gate, and the alternative is a stone stair winding round the shaft with a turn at every half-landing. Walls are thick, old and out of true, which means the vanity is scribed at both ends and the splash return is cut to follow the wall rather than to a straight line. A bathroom carved out of a bedroom keeps the bedroom window.

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. It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. External walls are thick and the run under the window sits in a deep reveal that has to be templated rather than assumed square. A bathroom in one of these was usually carved out of a larger room, so the proportions are odd, the ceiling is high and the reveals are deep enough to want stone in them. Deep reveals turn a window board into a real piece of stone.

A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. Where the aisle is too tight the usual answer is a reduced-depth top on one side, and a 500mm run is a different cut, a different sink and a different drainer to a 600mm one. 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. A slab bought for a bathroom alone is mostly unused, and priced so.