Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in Motspur Park

Yes. Motspur Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are KT3, SW20. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Merton. 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. An en-suite and a family bathroom come off the same load. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A side return glazed over gives the room a second aspect and a second floor level, because the old external threshold is still under the finish. 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. A separate WC becomes a cloakroom with a very small top. 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. 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.

The tail lift is still the pinch point, because the piece has to be walked off it onto the trolley while it is sitting at chest height. 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. 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. No basin aperture is worth rushing for a parking bay.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop design & quotation and worktop templating. 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. A building turned over floor by floor needs the batch held. 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. One drawing per bathroom, however alike they look.

A downdraught extractor takes a long slot out of the middle of the piece and a motor housing out of the cabinet below it, so what sits under the top is settled before anything is cut. 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 vanity comes off what the kitchen leaves behind. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

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. 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 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. A quartz sample left on the counter for a week under the actual kitchen lights settles more arguments than any showroom, and an owner is the only person in a position to do that. 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. Keys, dates and the basin should sit with the same person.

Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. Suction lifters need a clean dry face to hold, so in the wet the pads come off and the piece goes back to being carried on webbing by hand. 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. The turn at the head of the stairs decides a double vanity.

Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. 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. The tap has to clear the reveal before the hole is drilled.

Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. 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. The bathroom pieces come off last and go in first.

Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. 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. Power and waste come up through the floor, and where they surface decides which cabinet can hold a sink and which one cannot. 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. One slab run, so the bathroom matches the kitchen.