Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in Putney

Yes. Putney is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW15. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Wandsworth. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. 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 booked window suits a bathroom better than it suits a kitchen. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

The flats are stacked identically, so the kitchen above sits directly over this one and its waste passes through the same boxing. A bathroom in a block like this was usually carved out of a larger room, so the proportions are odd, the ceiling is high and the window reveals are deep enough to be worth cutting in stone. Half tiling leaves a line the splash return has to meet. 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. Bathrooms carry the same problems in a smaller room, and a smaller room leaves a vanity nowhere to absorb them. A low window over the basin caps the splash return.

Carrying down a flight is not the easier direction, because the weight runs ahead of the crew and whoever is at the bottom has no way of stopping a slip. 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 splash return travels with the top it belongs to. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. Where the van cannot wait, the top, the shelves and the adhesive all come in on the first trip and the van goes. The shelves come in with the top so nobody returns for them.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. 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. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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. The vanity is the piece that makes a converted flat read finished. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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. Several vanity tops off one slab run, or they will not match.

A peninsula projects into circulation space, so its outer corners usually take a radius rather than a point, and that radius is agreed at template rather than assumed. 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 bathroom pieces are labelled on the nest before the saw runs. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

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 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. Templated off the fitted unit, never off the bathroom plan. Confirm the block working hours and any porter sign-in, and have the plumber agree the waste position before we template. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. 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 void week is the easiest slot for a bathroom.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Old plaster built up over decades makes the scribing heavy, and that time has to be in the plan rather than found on the day. 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 bathroom top is drawn from the fitted unit, never from a plan.

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. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. A single red line has hours and a double red line does not, and the difference decides whether an early start is a plan or a penalty. 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. A vanity delivery is minutes at the kerb, not hours.

Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through 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. The scribe on a vanity is measured in depth it cannot spare.

Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. Peninsula tops are often the longest single piece in the kitchen, so if anything in the layout is going to force a second slab it is generally this 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. What the kitchen cannot use, the vanity usually can.