Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in Earl's Court

Yes. Earl's Court is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW5. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Kensington and Chelsea. Where a loading concession applies at all, it holds only while something is being carried, which makes it a way to unload rather than a way to park. 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. Everything the bathroom needs comes off the van at once. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

The flat below hears the floor more than the walls, so lifting boards to move a waste run is a conversation with a neighbour before it is a morning of work. 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. Dot-and-dab plasterboard sounds solid and is hollow behind, so anything fixed through it has to hit a dab or a batten rather than a void. Bathrooms carry the same problems in a smaller room, and a smaller room leaves a vanity nowhere to absorb them. An out-of-square corner shows on a short top faster than a long one.

Stone goes up on edge, and it is the half-landing turn rather than the flight itself that sets the maximum piece. 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. The landing turn matters more than the front door for a bathroom. Loading concessions differ from one zone to the next rather than following a single national rule, so what applied on the last job proves nothing about this one. Where the van cannot wait, the top, the shelves and the adhesive all come in on the first trip and the van goes. A cloakroom top is a single armful off the tail lift.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. Batching several kitchens together is the one situation where buying a whole slab is cheaper per kitchen rather than more expensive. 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. Two basins in one room is one piece, not two. A licensed shared house has fire-door and escape-route rules that decide how and when stone can be carried through the common parts. 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. Loft rooms bring an en-suite and a very tight flight.

Peninsulas frequently land on a lightweight partition or on units that were never fixed down, and stone needs proper support under it before it goes on. 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. Yield is why a vanity in a rare stone is still affordable. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

Taped internal angles in plasterboard belly at the corner, so the run picks up a few millimetres over the last 300mm and a plan-angle mitre will not close. 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. Half-tiled walls leave a line the top has to meet. Have the vanity unit fixed and levelled, and the basin and tap on site, before the templater arrives, and tell us what is inside any boxing. A landlord with several similar flats usually wants one specification repeated, so the material, the edge detail and the upstand height are recorded and reused rather than rechosen each time. 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. A specification repeated across flats is drawn once.

A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. The exception is a double vanity, which is a kitchen length in bathroom width and behaves like a worktop from the tail lift onwards. An en-suite off a bedroom adds a second flight, not a second job.

What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. The units stay where they are and only the surface changes. A van waiting on a loading concession has somebody standing with it, because a vehicle left unattended is the one that collects the ticket. 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. The van moves on. The fitter stays with the vanity.

A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. Chimney breasts are often taken out at ground level and left standing above, so the middle of the run is newer wall than the two ends of it. 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. Most vanity tops begin life as an offcut from another room.

A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. Because a peninsula is seen from both sides, the underside of any overhang gets the same edge treatment as the top, which is easy to leave out of a spec. 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. Ordered later, the batch match is a gamble rather than a plan.