Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in Noak Hill

Yes. Noak Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM3. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. 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 cloakroom top is a single armful off the tail lift. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

A period cottage has low ceilings, thick rubble-filled walls and a floor that has never been level, and the worktop is the thing that has to look straight. Bathrooms in houses this size are big enough for a double vanity, and a top with two basins and several tap holes is a worktop by any honest measure: it is nested like one, carried like one and priced like one. A large bathroom is where a double vanity becomes possible. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. 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 tile joint behind is what shows a top that is not level.

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. Stone reaches a bathroom in one trip or it does not reach it. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. Where the van cannot wait, the top, the shelves and the adhesive all come in on the first trip and the van goes. The van moves on. The fitter stays with the vanity.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop fabrication. 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. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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. One drawing per bathroom, however alike they look. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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. A second bathroom is worth ordering with the first.

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. Offcut stock is the cheapest stone a vanity will ever sit on. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over 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 stud wall takes a vanity only once there is timber behind it. Send the unit layout for every bathroom at once with the basin and tap models against each, so the slab can be nested for all of them. 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. An agent sees the vanity line and asks about tiling instead.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. These are the multi-piece jobs, where vein direction across a join matters as much as the join itself. 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. A vanity is priced as its own piece, not as a length of worktop.

Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. The units stay where they are and only the surface changes. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. Where the vanity is fitted alongside a kitchen the van is standing anyway, which is a good part of why the two rooms are worth ordering together. Ordered with the kitchen, the bathroom costs no extra journey.

The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. 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. Two rooms, one batch, one delivery.

Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. 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 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. Nothing in a bathroom is square, and the top has to be.