Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in Strand-on-the-Green

Yes. Strand-on-the-Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W4. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hounslow. Where the drive is too short for the van the back end overhangs the footway, and a footway is a route people are using rather than spare space. 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. The shelves come in with the top so nobody returns for them. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

There is no back addition on these, so the kitchen is the original rear room and the run is one wall long with a door at each end of it. Either way the walls are thin, the floor is boards over shallow joists and nothing meets at a right angle, so the vanity is scribed at both ends and the unit is fixed back to the wall as well as standing on the floor. A large bathroom is where a double vanity becomes possible. Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. Bathrooms carry the same problems in a smaller room, and a smaller room leaves a vanity nowhere to absorb them. A basin cannot be moved to suit a wall that is out of true.

A level threshold with hard standing outside it is the one arrangement where a full run goes in without a single re-grip. 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 staircase is the last stage of every bathroom carry. Having the van on the drive means the load can be staged, so the heavy pieces come off last and go straight in instead of standing outside. 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.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop fabrication. That says something about the housing round here, not about the work. Quote, cut and fit are the same here as on any other part of the patch. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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 bathroom is decided late and the offcut has usually gone. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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. Batched vanity tops are templated in one visit.

Where a run finishes hard against a wall the last few millimetres are scribed, and where it finishes in open floor it is cut square and polished, which is two different jobs on one length. 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. A double vanity is nested like a worktop, not like an offcut. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. 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. The waste position is fixed before the aperture is drawn. 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. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. 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. Toiletries do more to a bathroom top than water ever will.

A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. The tail lift is still the pinch point, because the piece has to be walked off it onto the trolley while it is sitting at chest height. What the route really decides for a bathroom is the shelving and the window board, since long thin pieces are the ones that break when they are twisted round a turn. A cut top is weaker than an uncut one, so it travels differently.

A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. That rear wall carries the back door and the only window, which leaves very little uninterrupted length for a sink run. The bathroom in one of these is usually a later addition over the back kitchen, so the walls are thinner, the floor moves and a vanity has to sit level in a room that is not. The soil stack decides the basin position more than taste does.

If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. There is nothing to pay before the template visit. Nothing in a house of this age is square, and the kitchen is usually the part that has been altered most often. 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. We seat the basin. Your plumber connects it.

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. 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 doorway partway along one wall breaks that side into two separate pieces, and two short pieces cost more between them than the single long one they replace. 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. Shelves and a window board come out of the same corner of the slab.