Splashbacks and upstands in Battersea Park

Yes. Battersea Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW11. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Wandsworth. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. 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. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

The lift is a small passenger car with a gate, and the alternative is a stone stair winding round the shaft with a turn at every half-landing. 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. A hundred millimetres covers more than it looks. An intruding steel column, a brick pier or a downstand breaks a run that would otherwise have been one clean piece. 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. The pier takes a joint against it, not across it.

Sintered stone at 12mm changes what a staircase can take, because the same run arrives at roughly half the weight of the granite equivalent. 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. Joint positions follow from that. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. 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 installation and worktop replacement. 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. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. 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. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. 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.

Peninsula tops are often the longest single piece in the kitchen, so if anything in the layout is going to force a second slab it is generally this one. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. External corners are mitred, not butted. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

Where a column lands in the run the template plots its actual outline so the stone is cut to fit around it rather than stopped short and filled. 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 window board below worktop height ends the upstand argument. 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. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. Full-height panels need the wall made good first, which is another trade and another timescale. Priced on its own line so it can be deferred.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Exposed structure means the back edge is not a straight line at all, and a scribe of fifteen or twenty millimetres across a run is normal. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. Full height wants a flat wall behind it.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. A piece carried on edge up a flight has to clear the ceiling above the stairs as well as the walls either side of it. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. It decides panel size before anything is cut.

Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. External walls are thick and the run under the window sits in a deep reveal that has to be templated rather than assumed square. Each return needs its own piece with a mitred or butted external corner, and those pieces should come off the same slab so the movement lines up across the corner. The plaster behind it is the real question.

The quote is itemised, so a job where you already hold the slab is the same job with the material line taken off it. Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. A managed portfolio tends to repeat one specification across every flat, which keeps later repairs and replacements simple to order. 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.