Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in Gants Hill

Yes. Gants Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are IG2. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Redbridge. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. 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. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The incoming main and the stopcock come up through the floor at the old scullery wall, so whatever unit stands over them has to stay removable. 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. High ceilings do nothing for a vanity, but the reveals do. Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. Bathrooms carry the same problems in a smaller room, and a smaller room leaves a vanity nowhere to absorb them. A vanity has no depth to give away to a scribe.

Booked delivery windows on a managed estate run to an hour, and a worktop install does not happen inside an hour. The exception is a double vanity, which is a kitchen length in bathroom width and behaves like a worktop from the tail lift onwards. A splash return travels with the top it belongs to. 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 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.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop design & quotation, worktop installation and worktop templating. 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. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. 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. A repeated top is still drilled to the taps actually bought.

Knee room under a breakfast bar is measured from the face of the cabinets rather than from the edge of the stone, so a deep apron quietly eats the depth somebody actually gets to sit in. 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.

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. 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 unit is packed level before the top goes near it. 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. An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. 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. Wall-hung units suit a bathroom somebody else cleans.

An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. Three stools along one side need more clear length than most plans allow, and once the seating depth is fixed the piece either grows or it loses a seat. A bathroom ordered with the kitchen is taken from the same slab run, so the two rooms match rather than nearly match. Small pieces are drawn onto the plan, never left to chance.

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. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. The units stay where they are and only the surface changes. 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 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. A second visit for a splash return is one we would rather avoid.

A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. 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. Where an overhang is too deep for steel on its own the choice is a leg at the end or a bracket underneath, and a bracket that lands where a knee goes is worse than no bracket at all. 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. A slab bought for a bathroom alone is mostly unused, and priced so.

Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. The rear wall now carries french or folding doors across most of its width, so a whole side of the room opens and a long piece comes straight in off the garden. 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. A pod bathroom inside a shell has walls built last week.