Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in Lewisham

Yes. Lewisham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE13. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of the borough. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. Where the van cannot wait, the top, the shelves and the adhesive all come in on the first trip and the van goes. A vanity fit ends before most parking restrictions do. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

The step down from the main house into the addition is commonly a hundred to a hundred and fifty millimetres, which gives the kitchen a different floor datum from the rest of the ground floor. The bathroom in one of these is almost never original: it is a later room over the back addition, or a bedroom divided in two. The window over the basin is the one the top answers to. 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. What is behind the plaster decides how a vanity is fixed.

Where the lift will not take the longest run we design a join in rather than gamble, because a piece that will not go up has to go back on the van. The exception is a double vanity, which is a kitchen length in bathroom width and behaves like a worktop from the tail lift onwards. The landing turn matters more than the front door for a bathroom. A single red line has hours and a double red line does not, and the difference decides whether an early start is a plan or a penalty. 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 plumber and the van rarely want the street on the same day.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here 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. Repeat work is where a vanity stops being an afterthought. 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. Several small tops nest better than one large one.

The free end is what needs deciding early: square edge, mitred apron down the end, or a full waterfall to the floor, and a waterfall is cut in sequence off the same part of the slab. 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. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

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. 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. Have the vanity unit fixed and levelled, and the basin and tap on site, before the templater arrives, and tell us what is inside any boxing. Method statements, insurance certificates and named operatives are wanted before a crew is cleared to attend, all of which is routine when it is asked for a week out. 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. Access to a tenanted bathroom is arranged, not assumed.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. 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. A shelf in a shower niche is scribed on three sides.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Where the addition is single storey the ceiling follows a lean-to roof, so one side of the room loses height and a full-height panel has a sloping stop. Either way the walls are thin, the floor is boards over shallow joists and nothing meets at a right angle, so the vanity is scribed at both ends and the unit is fixed back to the wall as well as standing on the floor. Loft en-suites lose their splash return to the slope.

Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. Whether the stone can stand on end in the car is the first question, because a lift that takes 2.1m upright takes nothing like that lying flat. What the route really decides for a bathroom is the shelving and the window board, since long thin pieces are the ones that break when they are twisted round a turn. An en-suite off a bedroom adds a second flight, not a second job.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. Goods lifts and passenger lifts fail differently: one has a rated load that matters, the other has a door aperture that matters more. A top with the basin aperture already cut has very little holding it together, so it travels flat on a board rather than on edge the way a worktop does. The bath is usually in the way before the doorway is.