A good quote for bathroom worktop fitting in St James Street reads like a description of your kitchen rather than a price list, and that is deliberate. Small two-bed Victorian terraces with a kitchen in the rear addition of about 2.2m to 2.6m, often with no room for a dishwasher unless the back door is moved. A good number of houses are split into two flats, putting the upper kitchen in a former bedroom with services run on the surface. We measure the kitchen you have, not the kitchen the plans said you would have. Those two part company often.
Injected damp courses and re-rendered lower walls leave the bottom metre standing proud of everything above it. The fittings come from four suppliers and arrive in no particular order, so the surface is drawn last and asked to reconcile all of them. The aperture is polished because you look straight down into it.
Kitchens in these flats are frequently in what was a bedroom or a return room, so the window is tall and its sill sits close to worktop height. Original boards over shallow joists give under load, so the unit is fixed back to the wall as well as standing on the floor before any stone goes on it. Pressed steel baths and stone vanities are a common pairing.
The housing behind these kitchens is Victorian terrace, small converted flat and recent infill apartment. They are not interchangeable, and a worktop finds the differences quickly.
Figures cover postcode district E17| Figure | St James Street | Against London |
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| homes built before 1919 | 48% | pre-1919 share higher than 76% of the 723 areas we cover |
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| homes built 1919 to 1939 | 15% | inter-war share lower than 52% of the 723 areas we cover |
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| median sale price, postcode district, Jan 2024 to Jun 2026, n=2,753 | £537,500 | median price lower than 50% of the 722 areas we cover |
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Sources: VOA Council Tax Stock of Properties 2025 and ONS Census 2021 for 15 MSOAs (E02000910, E02000911 and 13 more); HM Land Registry Price Paid for E17. Open Government Licence v3.0.
