Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in Shortlands

Yes. Shortlands is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are BR2. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bromley. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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 second visit for a splash return is one we would rather avoid. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Where the side return has been filled in, the old external wall is now an internal one and still carries its render, its gutter line and its old fixings. 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. Old pipework is boxed rather than moved, and the top notches round it. Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. Bathrooms carry the same problems in a smaller room, and a smaller room leaves a vanity nowhere to absorb them. Where the wall bows, the splash return is scribed to follow it.

Turning a heavy piece on edge indoors needs floor space at both ends of the turn, so the hall is cleared of furniture before anything comes off the van. 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 double vanity is a worktop as far as the carry is concerned. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. Where the van cannot wait, the top, the shelves and the adhesive all come in on the first trip and the van goes. Short jobs suffer most from a van that has to move.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. 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. Cloakrooms are the piece most often forgotten at ordering. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. 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. Repeat bathrooms come cheaper per top, not per square metre.

Waterfall ends are cut in sequence off the length either side of the top so the vein carries down the leg, and that sequence is gone the moment a piece has to be recut. 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. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

A window board sitting below finished worktop height leaves two choices, drop the top under it or notch the stone around it, and both cost more than a straight run. 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 basin cannot be moved to suit a wall that is out of true. Have the vanity unit fixed and levelled, and the basin and tap on site, before the templater arrives, and tell us what is inside any boxing. Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. A let bathroom wants quartz for the same reason a let kitchen does: nothing to seal, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be briefed on. The lead time on a vanity is the lead time on a kitchen.

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. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Everything on an island is fed from underneath, extraction, a socket run, a hob and sometimes a waste, and each of them wants its hole before the top is bonded down. A bathroom ordered with the kitchen is taken from the same slab run, so the two rooms match rather than nearly match. A vanity is nested last and cut from what is left.

Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. Nothing is payable in advance of the template. 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. 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. Small enough to carry, awkward enough to plan.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Units have to be fitted, fixed and level before templating, and it is better to hear that at the template than on the fitting day. A cill projecting forward of the plaster line pushes the back edge out, and the units then stand off the wall by that amount for the whole length. 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 waste position is fixed before the aperture is drawn.

The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. The rear wall of the addition carries both the back door and the window, which leaves very little unbroken wall for a run to sit against. None of it changes the material, but it does decide whether the top comes out of offcut stock or wants a slab bought for it alone. The aperture is polished because you look straight down into it.