Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in Feltham

Yes. Feltham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TW13, TW14. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hounslow. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. 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 bathroom return visit is planned around the street, not the diary. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

These were built in short runs of six or eight houses, so the party walls are solid brick and the rear elevation is a straight line with no outriggers. 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. Old pipework is boxed rather than moved, and the top notches round it. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. 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. Wall-hung means the wall carries the basin, so the wall gets checked.

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. Protection goes down the stairs as well as along the hall. A shared drive is only useful if the neighbour is not the one parked behind the van, so we ask which side the standing belongs to before the date is set. Where the van cannot wait, the top, the shelves and the adhesive all come in on the first trip and the van goes. Tap holes are drilled at the works, so nothing keeps the van waiting.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. 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. 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. Batched vanity tops are templated in one visit. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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. Two basins in one room is one piece, not two.

Where the sink and the hob face each other across the aisle, everything carried between them crosses the walkway, and that is the one movement the shape cannot design out. 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. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. 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 tile joint behind is what shows a top that is not level. 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. The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. 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. Wall-hung units suit a bathroom somebody else cleans.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. Internal walls are hollow clay block or stud rather than solid brick, so two points a metre apart on the same wall want two different fixings. 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. The same stone as the kitchen, in a narrower cut.

On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. Drives with a dropped kerb and a tight turn-in take a long van at an angle, and that angle decides which side the tail lift can work from. 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 basin travels in the van with the top it belongs to.

If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. The under-stair cupboard opens off the kitchen in most of them, and its door swing is the reason a corner run stops where it does. 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. Square rooms make short work of a vanity template.

Order is what matters: a slab is templated before it is cut, so an uncut slab is straightforward and one already machined for another kitchen is not. How much slab you hold matters: upstands and any remake have to come out of the same batch. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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.