Splashbacks and upstands in Barons Court

Yes. Barons Court is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W14. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hammersmith and Fulham. A permit covering the street is permission to park rather than a space reserved on it, and on a full street the difference is the whole morning. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Where the van has to move, the panels come in first. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

Sash windows sit in deep reveals with a working box behind the lining, so a run dying into one has to clear more than the plaster. Mansion block kitchens are full of boxed-in soil stacks, gas risers and heating pipework, and the boxing is usually plywood or plasterboard that stops short of the ceiling, so the splashback run gets broken up by returns rather than running clean wall to wall. Height, returns and sockets, all settled on site. 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. 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.

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. 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. Joint positions follow from that. Where the household has used up the visitor permits it gets for the year, the remaining options are a suspension or a paid bay and both belong on the quote. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. A panel carried past a live lane gets a second pair of hands.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Whichever it is, the template and the fitters do not change. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Wipe-down beats sealed grout on a turnaround. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Plot spec panels are ordered by the plot, not the room.

The joint where a peninsula meets the main run wants a gable directly under it, and where the units do not offer one, steel goes in to carry that joint instead. 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. External corners are mitred, not butted. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass 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. The sill caps the upstand before anything else does. The riser boxing must be finished in its final form and any access panel positions agreed before the template, since the stone is set out around them. One staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. 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.

The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Freeholder consent, a works agreement and proof of insurance are often wanted before a van is allowed to unload. Splashbacks come off the same slab run as the tops, which means the decision has to be made before fabrication starts. Boxed pipework decides the panel width before taste does.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Floors are solid concrete under a screed, so nothing is packed by driving a fixing in and everything is packed by shimming. Socket positions, sill heights and wall flatness are the three things that settle this, and all three are properties of the building. Making the wall good first is cheaper than working around it.

There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. A breakfast bar on the outer side is an overhang like any other, and the support under it is sized for people leaning on the end rather than for the weight of the stone alone. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. Panel height is set by the extractor.

Order is what matters: a slab is templated before it is cut, so an uncut slab is straightforward and one already machined for another kitchen is not. Supply through us runs £110 to £550 per square metre for the slab alone, which is the line you would be removing. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. One conversion drawing repeats its mistakes six times.