Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in Harold Park

Yes. Harold Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM3. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. 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. A second visit for a splash return is one we would rather avoid. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Wide doorways and level thresholds mean full-length pieces go in whole and the join count comes down to slab length alone. 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. High ceilings do nothing for a vanity, but the reveals do. A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. Bathrooms carry the same problems in a smaller room, and a smaller room leaves a vanity nowhere to absorb them. A stud wall takes a vanity only once there is timber behind it.

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. The piece is carried by its long edges, never by the aperture. 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. Where the van cannot wait, the top, the shelves and the adhesive all come in on the first trip and the van goes. Short jobs suffer most from a van that has to move.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop design & quotation. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It gets quoted, cut and fitted exactly as it would anywhere else on the patch. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. 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. A rear addition adds a cloakroom before it adds anything else. 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. 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. Shared houses want quartz vanities and no sealing regime.

Where a run finishes hard against a wall the last few millimetres are scribed, and where it finishes in open floor it is cut square and polished, which is two different jobs on one length. A bathroom ordered with the kitchen is taken from the same slab run, so the two rooms match rather than nearly match. One template visit covers both rooms if both are ready. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. 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. Nothing in a bathroom is square, and the top has to be. 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. 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. 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. Honed stone in a bathroom asks more of whoever cleans it.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. No payment is due before the template. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The window over the sink sits at about worktop height, so the run is set out around the sill and the reveal rather than under them. A vanity top is where all of that turns up in miniature, with the basin, the tap holes and a splash return crowded into a few hundred millimetres of stone. Basin, tap holes and splash return inside a few hundred millimetres.

What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. 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. A low window over the basin caps the splash return.

If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. 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. The whole bathroom fits on a trolley in one load.

The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. Where the roof has been converted there is usually a steel over the kitchen that went in after the walls, and the run beneath it is worth checking for square. Half-tiled walls are the pattern in these houses, and the tile line is what a splash return has to meet, which is settled before the top is drawn rather than after. A pod bathroom inside a shell has walls built last week.