Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in West Kensington

Yes. West Kensington is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W14. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hammersmith and Fulham. A timed school street shuts the road either side of the school day, so the van goes in between those two windows or it does not go in. 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. A booked window suits a bathroom better than it suits a kitchen. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Walls are solid brick with lime plaster and a hard skim over the top, and that skim comes away in sheets when old tiles are taken back. A bathroom in a block like this was usually carved out of a larger room, so the proportions are odd, the ceiling is high and the window reveals are deep enough to be worth cutting in stone. A large bathroom is where a double vanity becomes possible. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. 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.

The measurement that decides everything is the diagonal between the underside of the flight above and the outer edge of the turn below it. 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. Carried flat on a board once the aperture has been cut. An event-day suspension can override a bay that is perfectly usable the rest of the week, so a booked space gets checked again nearer the time. Where the van cannot wait, the top, the shelves and the adhesive all come in on the first trip and the van goes. The shelves come in with the top so nobody returns for them.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. That is the local housing talking rather than anything about the job. It is priced, cut and fitted no differently here than anywhere else we cover. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. 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. Repeat work is where a vanity stops being an afterthought. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. 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. Several small tops nest better than one large one.

A tall bank of housings at one end takes a chunk out of the working run, so the usable length of that side is always less than the length of the wall behind it. 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. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. 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 block working hours and any porter sign-in, and have the plumber agree the waste position before we template. 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. Honed stone in a bathroom asks more of whoever cleans it.

Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. There is no leaning a piece against a wall halfway up, so any flight longer than a dozen treads is planned around a rest point on a landing. The exception is a double vanity, which is a kitchen length in bathroom width and behaves like a worktop from the tail lift onwards. Two hands to a shelf, four to a double vanity.

Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. 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.

The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. Where a road is shut for filming or for works the diversion adds distance to the carry even when parking itself was never the problem. 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 vanity delivery is minutes at the kerb, not hours.

An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. Sash windows sit in deep reveals with a working box behind the lining, so a run dying into one has to clear more than the plaster. Walls are thick, old and out of true, which means the vanity is scribed at both ends and the splash return is cut to follow the wall rather than to a straight line. The soil stack decides the basin position more than taste does.