Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in Longlands

Yes. Longlands 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. 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. We arrive with the offcut pieces already labelled by room. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to 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 in these houses is the small room over the hall, and a vanity in it is short, shallow and hard against a wall at each end, so both ends are scribed and there is no tolerance left between them. An original bathroom is usually the smallest room upstairs. Casement handles and stays swing down into the space above the worktop, so the clearance that counts is the one measured with the window open. Bathrooms carry the same problems in a smaller room, and a smaller room leaves a vanity nowhere to absorb them. The scribe on a vanity is measured in depth it cannot spare.

Even an easy kerbside carry wants the pavement clear at the tail lift, because a three-metre piece on edge has a swing radius nobody expects until it is swinging. 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. Stone reaches a bathroom in one trip or it does not reach it. 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. An en-suite and a family bathroom come off the same load.

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 installation and worktop templating. 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. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. 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. Several small tops nest better than one large one. 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. 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. The bathroom schedule follows the plumber, not the programme.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. 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. A narrow top nests into waste nobody else wants. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. 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. A sloping floor is corrected under the unit, not under the stone. 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. The decision usually gets made standing in the room rather than at a desk, which is why a slab is worth viewing whole instead of choosing from a sample card. 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. A bathroom done once is worth the conversation about finish.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. A bathroom ordered with the kitchen is taken from the same slab run, so the two rooms match rather than nearly match. The bathroom is drawn while the kitchen is still on the bench.

The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. Rear extensions on these sit on shallow foundations, and the crack at the junction with the original wall tells you which way it has moved. 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. Shelves and a window board come off the same offcut.

What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. The walkway between the two runs is fixed by the units either side, so any overhang added to one worktop comes straight off the space somebody has to stand in. 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. Offcut stock is the cheapest stone a vanity will ever sit on.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. 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. 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. Half tiling leaves a line the splash return has to meet.