Splashbacks and upstands in Bank

Yes. Bank is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC2R, EC3V. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. A dedicated loading bay or service yard is the easiest arrangement in a managed building, provided the slot is booked and someone has the key to the shutter. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Panels come across in one pass with the route already cleared. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Every flat on the floor is the same plan handed left and right, so the room is predictable even where the building is not. The plasterboard is genuinely flat here, so a full-height splashback sits well and a slim upstand looks almost redundant, but the sockets are the problem, because they are set out to the developer's original kitchen and often land at odd heights or right on a joint line. Sockets in a stud wall move more easily than sockets in brick. Where a partition has been built off the floor screed rather than off the slab, it moves, and a mitre bonded across that corner is the first thing to open. 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.

Where the parking court sits behind the block the carry crosses open ground and gets boarded, because loaded trolleys and block paving do not agree. 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. The ceiling over a staircase limits a standing panel as much as the walls. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. A short bay slot is when the tall pieces get damaged.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. 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. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Grout lines are the first thing to fail in a let. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. Six kitchens, one socket layout, one panel drawing.

One leg of an L is nearly always the working run and the other little more than a landing space, but both are templated, cut and edged to the same standard. 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. Panels come off the same slab area as the run. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

An unsupported overhang off a stud wall wants noggins fixed between the studs before the boarding goes on, and once it is boarded and skimmed that option has gone. 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 socket you intend to move must be moved and re-plastered before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece of stone. One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Plastering finishes on somebody else’s timescale.

Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Say what you have and where it came from before anything is booked, because thickness and batch decide what can be done with it. Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. Upstands are the cheapest way to finish several kitchens consistently, and they come out of the offcuts the tops leave behind. The annexe gets the same panel as the main run.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. The room is genuinely square and the units are plumb, so the visit is more about the building than about the kitchen. Every socket, switch and any USB point has to be cut out of the stone to the actual measured position, so the template has to be taken with the faceplates off and the back boxes visible. What the plaster is stuck to matters more than its colour.

Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. 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. The kitchen is usually part of the living space, so three edges are read from a sofa rather than from standing height at the sink. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. The flatter the wall, the taller the stone.

Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. Piece size is set by the lift car and the entrance dogleg, which routinely turns a two-piece kitchen into a three-piece one. The plasterboard is flat enough for a full-height panel; it is the socket positions that cause the trouble. A reveal in a thick wall changes where the panel stops.