The honest way to talk about bathroom worktop fitting in Old Ford is to talk about kitchens first and worktops second, because one sets the terms for the other. Almost every renovated house here has a rear extension running to the boundary, which turns the old kitchen and scullery into one room with a 3m to 3.5m run under a flat rooflight and a separate island. Un-extended houses still have the kitchen at the very back with a door straight into the garden. None of it needs deciding today. The survey is where the guessing ends and the numbers start.
A picture rail, a deep skirting and a moulded architrave all sit in the way of anything that assumes flat wall from floor to ceiling. The fittings come from four suppliers and arrive in no particular order, so the surface is drawn last and asked to reconcile all of them. It is the smallest piece we cut and the most crowded.
The rear room is generous with a chimney breast in one corner, so the run gains a return and two scribed ends whatever the plan drew. 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. High ceilings do nothing for a vanity, but the reveals do.
What the street keeps repeating is Victorian terrace, interwar cottage estate and canal-side new-build. The template reads them differently even where the layout looks identical.
Figures cover the statistical area (MSOA) that contains Old Ford| Figure | Old Ford | Against London | What it means for the job |
|---|
| homes built before 1919 | 47% | pre-1919 share higher than 75% of the 723 areas we cover | |
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| homes built 1919 to 1939 | 2% | inter-war share lower than 90% of the 723 areas we cover | The plans vary house by house. |
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| flats and maisonettes | 68% | flat share higher than 62% of the 723 areas we cover | |
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Sources: VOA Council Tax Stock of Properties 2025 and ONS Census 2021 for MSOA E02000866. Open Government Licence v3.0.
