Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in Lamorbey

Yes. Lamorbey is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are DA15. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bexley. On a drive that only takes one vehicle nose-in, the van has to reverse the whole length of it to get back out, which decides which way it goes in. 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 bay for twenty minutes is enough for a vanity. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

The kitchen sits at the rear with a door to the garden and a window over the sink, so the useful run is broken into two short lengths. 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. Boarded floors give, and a vanity shows it at the tile line. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. 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. What is behind the plaster decides how a vanity is fixed.

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 way into a bathroom ends at a door that opens inward. The distance from the standing to the actual kitchen door is the number that counts, since plenty of drives finish at a side gate and a garden path. Where the van cannot wait, the top, the shelves and the adhesive all come in on the first trip and the van goes. We arrive with the offcut pieces already labelled by room.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop templating and worktop replacement. 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. 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. 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. Repeat work is where a vanity stops being an afterthought. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. 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. Several small tops nest better than one large one.

Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. 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. One template visit covers both rooms if both are ready. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

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. 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 top follows the unit, and the unit follows a 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. Because the money comes out of a household rather than a maintenance budget, phasing is common: tops now, island or splashbacks later, quoted so the second visit still matches the first. 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. Nothing in a vanity quote is bundled into the kitchen.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. Deep gravel takes the wheels of a loaded trolley and holds them, so either boards go down or the pieces are carried. 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. An en-suite and a family bathroom come off the same load.

Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Corner sinks and corner hobs sit exactly where the joint wants to be, so on an L the cut-out positions get settled before the join positions do. A bathroom ordered with the kitchen is taken from the same slab run, so the two rooms match rather than nearly match. The vanity comes off what the kitchen leaves behind.

The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Crittall windows were swapped for plastic ones in openings that were made good rather than rebuilt, which leaves reveals that are neither straight nor equal. 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. Cut for the basin you bought, not for a standard one.

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. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. 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.