Splashbacks and upstands in Beddington

Yes. Beddington is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SM6, CR0. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Sutton. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. The crate stays on the van until the route in is clear. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

A detached house of this age has a drive, a side path and a back door, so access is rarely the constraint and the design can follow the room. That leaves a ragged band right where the upstand has to sit, which is fine for a 100mm upstand that covers it, but a full-height splashback needs the wall made good first or it will rock on the high spots. A reveal in a thick wall changes where the panel stops. Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. 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 tall panel exposes what an upstand forgives.

A step up off the pavement means the piece is lifted to the threshold before it is carried anywhere, and that first lift is the one that wants four hands. 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. That is agreed at template, not on fitting day. A shared drive is only useful if the neighbour is not the one parked behind the van, so we ask which side the standing belongs to before the date is set. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Distance from tail lift to door is the whole risk here.

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 new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. The offcuts finish the room. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Less to clean, for whoever cleans it.

Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across 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. Window reveals take a piece of their own. 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 breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. 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. Scribe the top edge too or it stands off. The old tiling must be off and the wall made good and dry before templating, not on fitting day. The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Two budgets, settled before anything is cut.

A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. 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. The sill caps the upstand before anything else does.

Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. The window over the sink sits at about worktop height, so the run is set out around the sill and the reveal rather than under them. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Siliconed to the top, never grouted.

Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. The kitchen is usually a rear room extended into the garden, with the original external wall now standing inside the run. The ragged band left when old tiles and laminate come off together is what usually decides upstand over full height. Blown plaster comes off before stone goes on.

A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. Every piece is dry-assembled on the bench before it is loaded, so a fabrication mistake is found in the workshop rather than in your kitchen. A Victorian hall arch sits lower than the ceiling either side of it, and it is the point a piece carried on edge meets first. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. The panel is sized to the turn, not to the wall alone.