Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in Custom House

Yes. Custom House is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E16. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Newham. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. 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. Tap holes are drilled at the works, so nothing keeps the van waiting. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

There is usually a shared rear alley, and whether the gate onto it is unlocked decides whether long pieces come in from the back. The original bathroom in these houses is the small room over the hall, and a vanity in it is short, shallow and hard against a wall at each end, so both ends are scribed and there is no tolerance left between them. A separate WC becomes a cloakroom with a very small top. Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. 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. The top follows the unit, and the unit follows a level.

Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. The exception is a double vanity, which is a kitchen length in bathroom width and behaves like a worktop from the tail lift onwards. The bath is usually in the way before the doorway is. Where the bay sits some distance from the core, the carry across the car park is the longest leg of the day and gets boarded and lit. Where the van cannot wait, the top, the shelves and the adhesive all come in on the first trip and the van goes. The basin travels in the van with the top it belongs to.

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 templating and worktop installation. 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. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. 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. 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. 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.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. 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 slab bought for a bathroom alone is mostly unused, and priced so. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. 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. A shelf in a shower niche is scribed on three sides. Settle the tiling height and the basin model first, and let us know whether the unit is standing on the floor or hanging off the wall. Residents are given written notice before anyone attends, and that notice period rather than the workshop is what governs the earliest sensible start. 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. Approval comes before the aperture is drawn, not after.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. The back door frequently opens straight into the kitchen, which is the best carry route in the house and the one people forget to mention. 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. Old pipework is boxed rather than moved, and the top notches round it.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. Every piece is dry-assembled on the bench before it is loaded, so a fabrication mistake is found in the workshop rather than in your kitchen. Even an easy kerbside carry wants the pavement clear at the tail lift, because a three-metre piece on edge has a swing radius nobody expects until it is swinging. What the route really decides for a bathroom is the shelving and the window board, since long thin pieces are the ones that break when they are twisted round a turn. Protection goes down the stairs as well as along the hall.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. A bathroom ordered with the kitchen is taken from the same slab run, so the two rooms match rather than nearly match. The bathroom pieces are labelled on the nest before the saw runs.

Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. Original quarry-tiled floors sit lower than a later screed, so a run crossing that junction needs the units packed to one level. The original bathroom here is the small room over the hall, and a vanity in it is short, shallow and hard against two walls, so both ends are scribed. Square rooms make short work of a vanity template.