Splashbacks and upstands in Ardleigh Green

Yes. Ardleigh Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM11. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. Having the van on the drive means the load can be staged, so the heavy pieces come off last and go straight in instead of standing outside. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Nothing this long gets walked while a warden is circling. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

A detached house of this age has a drive, a side path and a back door, so access is rarely the constraint and the design can follow the room. These kitchens are nearly always retiled at least twice, and stripping the old tiles takes the bottom course of plaster with it because the original laminate top ran underneath the tiles rather than up to them. What the plaster is stuck to matters more than its colour. Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. 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. Scribed along the top edge as well.

The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. 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. Suction lifters take a panel where hands cannot get a grip. A dropped kerb wide enough for a car is not always wide enough for a long-wheelbase van, and the width of the crossing decides the rest. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. The crate stays on the van until the route in is clear.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop fabrication. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Cut with the tops while the batch is open. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Cut as a set, so one can replace another.

Waterfall ends are cut in sequence off the length either side of the top so the vein carries down the leg, and that sequence is gone the moment a piece has to be recut. 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. Tall panels are what push a job into a second slab. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. 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 obstruction breaks the length, every time. The old tiling must be off and the wall made good and dry before templating, not on fitting day. Someone who expects to still be there in ten years asks different questions: how a honed finish marks, what a sealer does and does not do, and whether a chip by the sink can be repaired in place. 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.

A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. A window board sitting below finished worktop height leaves two choices, drop the top under it or notch the stone around it, and both cost more than a straight run. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. A tall panel exposes what an upstand forgives.

Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. The carcasses stay put. Only the surface changes. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. Where a car has to come off the drive first, it is worth knowing whose car it is and whether the keys are in the house on the morning. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. Distance from tail lift to door is the whole risk here.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. The kitchen is usually a rear room extended into the garden, with the original external wall now standing inside the run. That leaves a ragged band right where the upstand has to sit, which is fine for a 100mm upstand that covers it, but a full-height splashback needs the wall made good first or it will rock on the high spots. A reveal in a thick wall changes where the panel stops.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. Everything on an island is fed from underneath, extraction, a socket run, a hob and sometimes a waste, and each of them wants its hole before the top is bonded down. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Height is agreed before the cut list closes.