Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in Roehampton

Yes. Roehampton 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. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects 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. Tap holes are drilled at the works, so nothing keeps the van waiting. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

Meters were moved out to a box on the flank wall on a later programme, and the cupboard they came out of is usually still standing in the corner. The complication is the service riser boxed into a corner: the top is notched round it with a radiused internal corner, never a square one, and the notch is machined at the works from a measurement taken at the finished face. Older walls give a vanity nothing straight to sit against. 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. A low window over the basin caps the splash return.

A car that answers every floor button pressed while a piece is standing in it needs to be held on the key, and the key usually lives at a desk that wants notice. 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. Unrestricted does not mean empty, and a street that is clear at seven is usually full by nine. Where the van cannot wait, the top, the shelves and the adhesive all come in on the first trip and the van goes. The basin travels in the van with the top it belongs to.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop fabrication. 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. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. 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. Shared houses want quartz vanities and no sealing regime. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. 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. Where every bathroom matches, one slab covers the building.

Because a peninsula is seen from both sides, the underside of any overhang gets the same edge treatment as the top, which is easy to leave out of a spec. 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. What the kitchen cannot use, the vanity usually can. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

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. 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. Have the boxing in its final finished form before the template, along with the fixed unit, the basin and the tap. Access is arranged through a managing agent or a scheme office rather than with the household directly, so a date gets confirmed once in writing and moving it costs a fortnight. 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. The basin model is confirmed by whoever ordered it.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. Where the kitchen has been opened into the living room the opening was trimmed with a steel, and a stub of the old wall was left standing at one end. 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 is a short job that repays being drawn properly.

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. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. 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. 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 scribe on a vanity is measured in depth it cannot spare.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. A skip, a delivery lorry or a run of scaffolding takes the frontage the van needed, so the street is worth a look the day before rather than on the morning. 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 second visit for a splash return is one we would rather avoid.

What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. 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. Where the floor falls away the unit is packed level first, because a top that follows a sloping floor announces it against the tile joints behind. A sloping floor is corrected under the unit, not under the stone.