Splashbacks and upstands in Beckton

Yes. Beckton is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E6, E16. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Newham. A visitor or a neighbour parked on the drive is a five-minute problem at eight in the morning and an hour-long one at eleven. 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. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

The kitchen occupies the ground floor of the addition with a garden door at the far end, so there is a second way in that is narrower than the front door and a great deal shorter. 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. Decided before fabrication starts. A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. 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. Each obstruction is another joint, and it is priced as one.

A loading bay or a red route puts a clock on the unload, so the pieces come off in the order they will be fitted rather than the order they were loaded. 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. Where the front garden has been paved over completely the van stands close to the house, and the route in is still a standard front door. 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.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. That is the local housing talking rather than anything about the job. It is priced, cut and fitted no differently here than anywhere else we cover. 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. 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. 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. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. The offcuts finish 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. Panel height is set by the extractor. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. 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 panel takes its height off the steel. 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. Flats bought out of managed stock keep the original kitchen dimensions long after the ownership changed, so the layout says very little about who is paying for the work. 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.

Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. Full-height panels are the awkward thing to move, light enough to lift and long enough to flex on the way. Distance from tail lift to door is the whole risk here.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. The chimney breast has almost always been taken out of the kitchen with the stack left standing above it, so that bay of wall is newer plasterwork on a different plane. A 100mm upstand bedded on silicone is the honest answer where the plaster bows, because it rides what a tall panel exposes. Height, returns and sockets, all settled on site.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. 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. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Every internal corner is two pieces, not one.

Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. The back addition is frequently a single skin of brick rendered on both faces, which takes a fixing badly and moves with the weather. Splashbacks come off the same slab run as the tops, which means the decision has to be made before fabrication starts. The tile line that was there proves nothing about level.