Splashbacks and upstands in Addington

Yes. Addington is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are CR0. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Croydon. Where the front garden has been paved over completely the van stands close to the house, and the route in is still a standard front door. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. A panel carried past a live lane gets a second pair of hands. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

Walls look modern and are not: block or breeze with a skim that has been patched over decades, so dry-laying and scribing still apply. Post-war terraces are typically blockwork or early lightweight block with a hard render coat, and the kitchen has usually been reconfigured at least once, leaving patched areas of newer plaster next to original render that sit at different depths. A chimney breast breaks the run and the panels follow it. Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. It is usually what pushes a job towards a 100mm upstand instead of a full-height panel, because an upstand rides what a panel exposes. Full height wants a flat wall behind it.

A hall radiator or a coat hook at shoulder height takes a hundred millimetres off the usable width, and a hundred millimetres is often the entire margin. Splashback panels are lighter than a worktop and far more awkward, because a tall thin piece has to be carried on edge and cannot be tilted to clear a turn. It decides panel size before anything is cut. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Nothing this long gets walked while a warden is circling.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop replacement. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. A second kitchen or a kitchenette in an annexe is a small job with the same fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines as a large one. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Cut as a set, so one can replace another. Where an annexe has been built or converted, its floor and its walls are newer than the main house and behave differently under the same run. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. The offcuts finish the room.

A dishwasher door on one side and an oven door on the other cannot both stand open in a narrow aisle, so which appliance goes where matters more in this shape than in any other. The same shape decides where splashback pieces break, and a joint in a corner reads as a detail while one in a clear run reads as a mistake. The run decides where that joint falls. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. A tall panel that fits at the worktop will stand off the wall at the top unless the wall is dubbed out or the panel is scribed. Each obstruction is another joint, and it is priced as one. Boiler position, flue and any pipework drops must be settled and the wall skimmed level before templating the splashback run. The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. A second visit needs a second permission.

Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. A window at one end and a doorway at the other means one end of the run is lit from behind and the other is interrupted, so the two ends of the same length behave differently. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. The panel seam sits over the worktop seam.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. The window sits in the middle of the run over the sink, and its board and cill set the limit on how tall an upstand can be. That step is exactly what an upstand covers and what a full-height panel exposes, so unless the wall is skimmed level end to end, a 100mm band is the reliable choice. Where the plaster undulates, the shorter piece wins.

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. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. Where the wall cannot be made good, setting the stone deliberately proud on a subframe with a shadow gap reads as a detail rather than a bad fit. The panel takes its height off the steel.

What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. Where the hall runs straight through to the back the piece can be walked in flat, and it is only the two door frames that have to be cleared. It is usually the full-height panels rather than the tops that will not make the turn, and that only shows up when they arrive. That is agreed at template, not on fitting day.