Splashbacks and upstands in Alibon

Yes. Alibon is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM10. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Barking and Dagenham. Unrestricted does not mean empty, and a street that is clear at seven is usually full by nine. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. A long carry turns a light piece into an awkward one. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A maisonette puts the kitchen on one of two levels, so an internal staircase may be part of the route as well as the communal one. The rear kitchen wall in ex-council flats and maisonettes is commonly dense in-situ concrete or blockwork with a thin skim, which means mechanical fixings are hard work and the splashback is held on adhesive rather than screwed. A chimney breast breaks the run and the panels follow it. A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. 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. A tall panel exposes what an upstand forgives.

Stone goes up on edge, and it is the half-landing turn rather than the flight itself that sets the maximum piece. 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. They stand upright in the van and stay upright until they are on the wall. A skip, a delivery lorry or a run of scaffolding takes the frontage the van needed, so the street is worth a look the day before rather than on the morning. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. Panels come across in one pass with the route already cleared.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. The cheap way to make eight kitchens look specified. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Wipe-down beats sealed grout on a turnaround.

A mitred corner is cut and dressed as a matched pair, and if either leg shifts by a millimetre on site the joint opens along its whole length rather than at one end. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Panels come off the same slab area as the run. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

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. 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. Scribe the top edge too or it stands off. Any surface trunking or conduit has to be rerouted or accepted and boxed before templating, because the stone cannot be scribed around a live conduit on site. Consent for the work sits with the freeholder or the managing body, and getting it in writing first avoids a crew arriving to a locked door. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Two trades, two budgets, one drawing.

A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. A door frame catches a tall panel long before a short one.

Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. Panels travel on edge in a frame, and the frame needs the same clearance the finished piece does. Joint positions follow from that.

What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. The units stay where they are and only the surface changes. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. Full-height panels are the awkward thing to move, light enough to lift and long enough to flex on the way. A short bay slot is when the tall pieces get damaged.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. The original plan had one sink position, and moving it means taking a waste through a wall that does not want to be cut. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. The tile line that was there proves nothing about level.