Splashbacks and upstands in Barnes

Yes. Barnes is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW13. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Richmond upon Thames. A van waiting on a loading concession has somebody standing with it, because a vehicle left unattended is the one that collects the ticket. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Where the van has to move, the panels come in first. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

There is no back addition on these, so the kitchen is the original rear room and the run is one wall long with a door at each end of it. Lath-and-plaster on the party wall and the chimney breast returns almost never runs true, so a 100mm upstand bedded on silicone is the honest answer here, it rides the bow and hides the junction the worktop can never close on its own. A reveal in a thick wall changes where the panel stops. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. 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. Upstands sit tight because both edges are cut.

The tail lift is still the pinch point, because the piece has to be walked off it onto the trolley while it is sitting at chest height. 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. Nothing is leaned anywhere it could slide down. Controlled hours that end in the middle of the afternoon make the second half of the day easy and put the whole problem in the first half. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. A panel carried past a live lane gets a second pair of hands.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. 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 a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. The offcuts finish the room.

Whether it comes off the same slab as the run behind it or needs one of its own is settled by laying both against the usable area of the slab, not by adding the metres up. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Tall panels are what push a job into a second slab. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. 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 breast return is scribed on three edges. The chimney breast recess must be replastered and fully dry, and the hob and extractor positions fixed, before anyone templates a full-height piece into it. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Priced on its own line so it can be deferred.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. Chimney breasts and the alcoves either side of them break the run into short pieces before anyone has drawn a kitchen. 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.

Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. A short lunchtime window of control exists to keep commuters off the street, and it still catches a trade van standing there for an hour. Full-height panels are the awkward thing to move, light enough to lift and long enough to flex on the way. Nothing this long gets walked while a warden is circling.

Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. That rear wall carries the back door and the only window, which leaves very little uninterrupted length for a sink run. Where a client wants a full-height piece behind the hob, it usually sits in the old chimney recess, and that recess is rarely square top to bottom or side to side, so it has to be templated as a trapezium rather than a rectangle. Blown plaster comes off before stone goes on.

Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. 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. Suction lifters need a clean dry face to hold, so in the wet the pads come off and the piece goes back to being carried on webbing by hand. 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. The break goes where a joint reads as deliberate.