Splashbacks and upstands in Barnes Cray

Yes. Barnes Cray is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are DA1. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bexley. 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. 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. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

Steel columns and downstands land where the frame put them, which is frequently in the middle of what would otherwise be a clean run. Exposed brick is the defining issue: the face is uneven by 10mm or more across a bay, so a stone splashback either scribes to it, which means the back of the panel has to be relieved, or it is deliberately set proud on a subframe with a shadow reveal all round. A reveal in a thick wall changes where the panel stops. 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. 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. Scribe the top edge too or it stands off.

Concierge buildings want the goods entrance, a booked lift and proof of insurance, all of which is straightforward when it is asked for a week out. 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. 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. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. A short bay slot is when the tall pieces get damaged.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop fabrication. 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. 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. 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. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Six kitchens, one socket layout, one panel drawing.

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 panel seam sits over the worktop seam. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

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 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. The sill caps the upstand before anything else does. Decide and build the backing method, scribe, subframe or board, before the template, because the templater is measuring to that face and not to the brick. Where a landlord or housing provider is involved there is a specification to meet and a process to follow, and both are settled before a date is offered. 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. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. Bollards, planters and a one-way service road can turn what looks like a ten-metre carry into a fifty-metre one. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. A polished face close to an edge does not survive a knock.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. These read as easy from the outside and rarely are, since the flat entrance is often tighter than the goods lift. Splashbacks come off the same slab run as the tops, which means the decision has to be made before fabrication starts. The wall decides, not the brochure.

Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. 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. 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. A downstand sets the panel height, not the wall units.

An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. 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. External corners are mitred, not butted.