Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in South Wimbledon

Yes. South Wimbledon is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW19. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Merton. 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 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. Short jobs suffer most from a van that has to move. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

Floors are suspended timber over a shallow void and have moved, so the units are packed and levelled before anything is set on them. 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. Square rooms make short work of a vanity template. Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. Bathrooms carry the same problems in a smaller room, and a smaller room leaves a vanity nowhere to absorb them. The waste position is fixed before the aperture is drawn.

Two people will walk a two-metre piece in through a front door; the same hall with a three-metre piece wants four, purely because nobody can let go halfway. 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. The landing turn matters more than the front door for a bathroom. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. Where the van cannot wait, the top, the shelves and the adhesive all come in on the first trip and the van goes. The whole bathroom fits on a trolley in one load.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands 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. 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. A landlord specifying once is specifying tap holes once. 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. En-suites and family bathrooms rarely take the same depth.

Walls at both ends mean two scribes on every piece, and a run that has to drop between two fixed points has no tolerance left to give away. 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 thickness follows the kitchen unless you ask otherwise. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. 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. An out-of-square corner shows on a short top faster than a long one. 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. Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it is. 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. An agent sees the vanity line and asks about tiling instead.

What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. 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. Half-tiled walls leave a line the top has to meet.

Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. 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. A cloakroom under a stair slope limits the tap before the top.

Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. 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. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. Where the vanity is fitted alongside a kitchen the van is standing anyway, which is a good part of why the two rooms are worth ordering together. A bay for twenty minutes is enough for a vanity.

The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. A small room puts the sink, hob and tap cut-outs close together on one short length, and the bridge of stone left between them decides whether it can be cut in one piece. Where a bedroom has been divided to make a bathroom the window sits off centre to the new room and the vanity ends up under it, which puts the window board in the order rather than outside it. A large bathroom is where a double vanity becomes possible.