Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in Surrey Quays

Yes. Surrey Quays is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE16. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. 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. Two pieces and a tube of sealant is the whole delivery. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

Block and beam floors with blockwork walls are true enough that the scribes are light and the joins can be pulled tight. Bathrooms in these are square, plumb and finished before anyone moves in, so the template is short work and the whole question becomes what the unit is fixed to. A bathroom over a kitchen has its waste run already decided. Where a partition has been built off the floor screed rather than off the slab, it moves, and a mitre bonded across that corner is the first thing to open. 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.

Where the parking court sits behind the block the carry crosses open ground and gets boarded, because loaded trolleys and block paving do not agree. 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 cloakroom under the stairs is a short carry into a tight room. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. 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 booked window suits a bathroom better than it suits a kitchen.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. 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. Upgrading a builder-finish kitchen is mostly a swap, so the cost sits in the material choice rather than in the shape of the room. 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 second bathroom is worth ordering with the first. Handover-spec kitchens are square, plumb and predictable, which means the join count is honest and driven by run length rather than by the building. 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. Small tops are where a slab finally gets fully used.

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. Offcut stock is the cheapest stone a vanity will ever sit on. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

An unsupported overhang off a stud wall wants noggins fixed between the studs before the boarding goes on, and once it is boarded and skimmed that option has gone. 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. A basin cannot be moved to suit a wall that is out of true. Confirm the unit depth for each bathroom separately, book the lift if the building wants it booked, and have both taps on site. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. 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. Honed stone in a bathroom asks more of whoever cleans it.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. An aisle under a metre stops being a working space the moment two people are in it, and the depth of the tops either side is what decides whether that happens. 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. Two rooms, one batch, one delivery.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Infill plots usually put the kitchen at the back with wide doors to a small garden, and that opening is the best route in. Partition walls are plasterboard on studs, and a wall-hung vanity carrying stone wants timber behind the board rather than fixings into plasterboard alone. High ceilings do nothing for a vanity, but the reveals do.

The fit follows 5 to 10 working days after the template, and nothing is cut before that visit because nothing is cut from a plan. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. The lift car, the loading bay and the building manager decide the piece sizes here, not the slab. 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. Small enough to carry, awkward enough to plan.

Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. Stud centres are almost never where the brackets would like to be, so fixing positions get set from the framing and the stone is designed to suit. 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. The waste position is fixed before the aperture is drawn.