Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in Portsoken

Yes. Portsoken is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E1, EC3N. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. An event-day suspension can override a bay that is perfectly usable the rest of the week, so a booked space gets checked again nearer the time. 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 whole bathroom fits on a trolley in one load. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

The communal entrance opens straight off the pavement with no lobby, so the carry starts at the kerb and turns immediately. Windows sit low over the basin in these houses, and that window caps the height of any splash return before the rest of the room is even considered. Loft en-suites lose their splash return to the slope. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. Bathrooms carry the same problems in a smaller room, and a smaller room leaves a vanity nowhere to absorb them. Nothing in a bathroom is square, and the top has to be.

The lift has to be booked and blanketed before anything moves, and that booking needs to cover the old tops coming out as well as the new stone going in. 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. A vanity top is lifted once and set down once. Where a road is shut for filming or for works the diversion adds distance to the carry even when parking itself was never the problem. Where the van cannot wait, the top, the shelves and the adhesive all come in on the first trip and the van goes. A bay for twenty minutes is enough for a vanity.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop installation. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. 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. 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. Two basins in one room is one piece, not two. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. 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. Loft rooms bring an en-suite and a very tight flight.

Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. 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. Two rooms, one batch, one delivery. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

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. A low window over the basin caps the splash return. Measure from the finished unit up to the underside of the window sill and send it with the basin and tap models. Residents are given written notice before anyone attends, and that notice period rather than the workshop is what governs the earliest sensible start. 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. Wall-hung units suit a bathroom somebody else cleans.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Nothing changes hands until after the template. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. A boiler hangs on the wall above the run in most of these, and its pipework drops exactly where a splashback wants to go. 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. Cut for the basin you bought, not for a standard one.

Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. 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. Templated off the fitted unit, never off the bathroom plan.

A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. 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. A vanity is nested last and cut from what is left.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. Doorways are 762mm at best, and the turn from the hall into the kitchen is the pinch point rather than the front door. 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. Shelves and a window board come off the same offcut.