Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in Longbridge

Yes. Longbridge is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are IG11. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Barking and Dagenham. Some zones are controlled for a short window in the middle of the day and open either side of it, which makes the timing of the visit the whole question. 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. The basin travels in the van with the top it belongs to. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Deep original skirting is often left in behind the units, standing them off the wall, so the back edge of the stone is plotted where the carcasses actually sit. 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. Pressed steel baths and stone vanities are a common pairing. A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. 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.

Every internal doorway on the way through is another frame to clear, and internal doors come off their hinges rather than being propped open. The exception is a double vanity, which is a kitchen length in bathroom width and behaves like a worktop from the tail lift onwards. Two hands to a shelf, four to a double vanity. A suspension only works if the cones and the notice are actually there on the morning, and now and then a car is sitting in the bay regardless. Where the van cannot wait, the top, the shelves and the adhesive all come in on the first trip and the van goes. A second visit for a splash return is one we would rather avoid.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop replacement and worktop installation. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. 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. Cloakrooms are the piece most often forgotten at ordering. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. 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. Repeat bathrooms come cheaper per top, not per square metre.

Where the aisle is too tight the usual answer is a reduced-depth top on one side, and a 500mm run is a different cut, a different sink and a different drainer to a 600mm one. A bathroom ordered with the kitchen is taken from the same slab run, so the two rooms match rather than nearly match. One slab run, so the bathroom matches the kitchen. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. 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. A boxed soil stack takes depth from where the basin wants it. 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. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. 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. An en-suite in a let flat is specified like the bathroom next door.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. The rear wall of the addition carries both the back door and the window, which leaves very little unbroken wall for a run to sit against. 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. The stone is the simple half of a bathroom fit.

Supply through us runs £110 to £550 per square metre for the slab alone, which is the line you would be removing. Sinks, taps and hobs are yours to buy in any case, and they only have to be in the room for the template. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. 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 converted house needs a vanity on every floor.

The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. Lower ground floor kitchens are reached by a stair with a winder in it, and the head height over that winder is lower than the room at either end. None of it changes the material, but it does decide whether the top comes out of offcut stock or wants a slab bought for it alone. Nothing about a vanity is standard except the depth of the unit.

An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. These were built late enough to have a damp course and proper footings, so the front of the house is close to true and the rear addition holding the kitchen is the part that has dropped. Where a bedroom has been divided to make a bathroom the window sits off centre to the new room and the vanity ends up under it, which puts the window board in the order rather than outside it. Stud partitions want noggins before a wall-hung unit goes up.