Splashbacks and upstands in Battersea

Yes. Battersea is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW11, SW8. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Wandsworth. Permit hours are what matters, not the permit itself, because a bay that frees up at six in the evening is no use for a template at ten. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. A panel carried past a live lane gets a second pair of hands. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

Cottage terraces have no hall to speak of and the front door opens almost straight into the room, which makes the carry easier and the protection harder. 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. Blown plaster comes off before stone goes on. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. 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 breast return is scribed on three edges.

Where the hall runs straight through to the back the piece can be walked in flat, and it is only the two door frames that have to be cleared. 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. That is agreed at template, not on fitting day. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Nothing this long gets walked while a warden is circling.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. 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. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Cut as a set, so one can replace another. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. The offcuts finish the room.

A full-depth tall unit projects past the worktop line, and the run has to be scribed against its side panel instead of carrying on past it. 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.

Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. 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. Set it proud on a subframe and the gap becomes deliberate. 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. Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it is. 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 template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The side return was an outside toilet and a coal store before it was ever a kitchen, and the walls left over from that are half a brick thick. 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.

The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Party wall settlement pulls the floor down at one side of the room, so a long run reads level at one end and not at the other. Splashbacks come off the same slab run as the tops, which means the decision has to be made before fabrication starts. Old walls take a scribed upstand better than a rigid panel.

Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. Enforcement zones rarely accept a trade van unloading stone as an exemption, so this gets sorted before the date is confirmed rather than argued about afterwards. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. The crate stays on the van until the route in is clear.

Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Floors are suspended timber over a shallow void and have moved, so the units are packed and levelled before anything is set on them. A full-height panel in a chimney recess is templated as a trapezium, since that recess is square in neither direction. The wall build-up sets the depth of the return.