Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in Dartmouth Park

Why bathroom worktops in Dartmouth Park are their own job

What is different about a worktop job in Dartmouth Park comes down to the route and the walls. Steep tree-lined streets with permit bays both sides and no room to double park, and the gradient matters when you are walking a slab on an A-frame. Front doors are up a short flight with a long straight hall to the rear, so it is the kerb-to-door step that catches people out rather than the internal run. The island is usually the biggest single piece of the job, so we book the extra pair of hands and check the extension floor is level first, because new screed over old joist lines rarely is. You get a drawing you have agreed, a price that is fixed, and a five year guarantee on the workmanship.

The money

What bathroom worktops cost in Dartmouth Park

In Dartmouth Park, 73% of homes are flats or maisonettes: higher than 68% of the 723 areas we cover. Short lengths nest well and waste little, so the material line is usually the kindest part of a galley quote. Thickness on its own can move the supply figure a long way inside the £110 to £550 range, and it changes the machining as well, which is why the two are never given as one number.

Victorian and Edwardian terraces

What Dartmouth Park asks for in bathroom worktops

Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. Whoever cleans the room decides how it ages, because bleach, descaler and an abrasive cream will do more in a year than a family does in ten. The lead time on a vanity is the lead time on a kitchen.

We rank the domestic jobs against a neighbourhood's building stock, and this is not one of them. The commercial work is surveyed and fitted to the same standard.

The building

The building, and what it does to the bathroom worktops

In this corner of the borough, new build has barely touched the stock, so we are fitting into existing kitchens rather than empty shells. An en-suite added to a bedroom is another vanity carrying the same work at a reduced size. The pattern tells us which bathroom to expect, not which basin.

The bay at the front and the back addition at the rear were built to different standards, and the kitchen is nearly always in the weaker of the two. The bathroom in one of these is almost never original: it is a later room over the back addition, or a bedroom divided in two. Old pipework is boxed rather than moved, and the top notches round it.