Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in Waterloo

Yes. Waterloo is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE1. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. A single red line has hours and a double red line does not, and the difference decides whether an early start is a plan or a penalty. 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. Everything the bathroom needs comes off the van at once. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Cottage terraces have no hall to speak of and the front door opens almost straight into the room, which makes the carry easier and the protection harder. 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. Boarded floors give, and a vanity shows it at the tile line. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. Bathrooms carry the same problems in a smaller room, and a smaller room leaves a vanity nowhere to absorb them. Templated off the fitted unit, never off the bathroom plan.

A pendant light hanging in the middle of a hall ceiling sets the angle a piece can be tilted to, and it is the measurement nobody thinks to take. 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. Protection goes down the stairs as well as along the hall. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. Where the van cannot wait, the top, the shelves and the adhesive all come in on the first trip and the van goes. A cloakroom top is a single armful off the tail lift.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop templating. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. 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. 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. Loft rooms bring an en-suite and a very tight flight. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. A house divided into flats needs a vanity for each of them, and small repeated pieces are the one case where buying a whole slab makes sense. A repeated top is still drilled to the taps actually bought.

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. 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 bathroom order is cheapest while the kitchen is still open. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. 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 scribe on a vanity is measured in depth it cannot spare. 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. A leaseholder paying for their own kitchen inside managed stock still needs the freeholder to consent, and that consent is about the building and the common parts rather than about the worktop. 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. Keys, dates and the basin should sit with the same person.

Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. 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. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. 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 sloping floor is corrected under the unit, not under the stone.

An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. Floors are suspended timber over a shallow void and have moved, so the units are packed and levelled before anything is set on them. 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 rear addition bathroom is cold, narrow and full of pipework.

The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. There is usually a step down into the back addition, so the kitchen floor and the hall floor are not the same level and neither of them is flat. 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. One visit, sitting between two plumbing visits.

Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. Handles on opposing runs meet in the middle of the aisle, so a deep edge profile specified on both sides takes width out of the standing space twice over. A bathroom ordered with the kitchen is taken from the same slab run, so the two rooms match rather than nearly match. A cloakroom top is the easiest piece on any nesting plan.