Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in Fortune Green

Yes. Fortune Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW6, NW2. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. Estate roads inside a controlled zone are sometimes managed privately rather than by the council, which changes who has to be asked. 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 cloakroom top is a single armful off the tail lift. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

An infill house is built to modern standards on an old plot, so the room is square even though the site around it is not. Bathrooms in these are square, plumb and finished before anyone moves in, so the template is short work and the whole question becomes what the unit is fixed to. What the wall is made of decides how the unit is fixed. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. 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 hall radiator or a coat hook at shoulder height takes a hundred millimetres off the usable width, and a hundred millimetres is often the entire margin. 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. Offcut-sized pieces are the easiest stone in the trade to move. A controlled parking zone means either a visitor permit sorted in advance or a suspended bay, and a suspension is applied for days ahead rather than on the morning. Where the van cannot wait, the top, the shelves and the adhesive all come in on the first trip and the van goes. The van moves on. The fitter stays with the vanity.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop replacement. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. Developer-fitted kitchens come with thin cam-lock carcasses, which are fine under laminate and want bracing before stone goes on them. 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. Housings and integrated appliances are set out for a 38mm laminate top, so dropping to 20mm or 30mm stone changes the clearances and needs checking before anything 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. Loft rooms bring an en-suite and a very tight flight.

Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. 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 waste from a basin aperture is what a shelf is cut from. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. 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 unit depth for each bathroom separately, book the lift if the building wants it booked, and have both taps on site. Flats bought out of managed stock keep the original kitchen dimensions long after the ownership changed, so the layout says very little about who is paying for the work. 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. The basin model is confirmed by whoever ordered it.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. The units below stay exactly as they are; only the surface is replaced. Permit hours are what matters, not the permit itself, because a bay that frees up at six in the evening is no use for a template at ten. Where the vanity is fitted alongside a kitchen the van is standing anyway, which is a good part of why the two rooms are worth ordering together. Ordered with the kitchen, the bathroom costs no extra journey.

Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. A wall-hung unit puts the whole weight into the wall rather than onto the floor, so what the wall is built of stops being a detail. The waste position is fixed before the aperture is drawn.

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. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Riser panels, wall boxes and the boiler cupboard sit in fixed positions the developer will not move for a worktop. 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. We seat the basin. Your plumber connects it.

A piece is never laid flat across a gap while it is moved, because that is how stone cracks unaided. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. Where the hall runs straight through to the back the piece can be walked in flat, and it is only the two door frames that have to be cleared. The exception is a double vanity, which is a kitchen length in bathroom width and behaves like a worktop from the tail lift onwards. Nobody carries a drilled vanity top by one end.