Splashbacks and upstands in Bickley

Yes. Bickley is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are BR1. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bromley. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Distance from tail lift to door is the whole risk here. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Handmade brick and lime plaster move visibly along a run, and a straight-cut back edge shows it immediately. These runs are long and often include a range recess, so the splashback is nearly always more than one piece and the joint placement matters, put it in a corner or over a hob centre line, not randomly in the middle of a clear run. Old plaster rarely gives you a flat metre. 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. Scribe the top edge too or it stands off.

Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. 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. The panel is sized to the turn, not to the wall alone. 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. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. A long carry turns a light piece into an awkward one.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication and worktop installation. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. Where an annexe has been built or converted, its floor and its walls are newer than the main house and behave differently under the same run. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. The offcuts finish the room. Extended households run kitchens hard, and that pushes the specification towards granite or sintered stone rather than a light quartz. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. Less to clean, for whoever cleans it.

Island units are rarely fixed to anything at first fix, so they get screwed to the floor and levelled against the perimeter run before the stone is measured at all. 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. Height is agreed before the cut list closes. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

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. 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. The range and extractor must be sited and the window cill finished before the template, as both fix the vertical limits of the splashback. Because the money comes out of a household rather than a maintenance budget, phasing is common: tops now, island or splashbacks later, quoted so the second visit still matches the first. 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.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. Carrying through the house means protecting the whole route first: floor boarded, banister padded, and the front door held open on a wedge rather than by hand. 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. It travels on edge, so the clearance is checked on edge.

Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. Sinks, taps and hobs are yours to buy in any case, and they only have to be in the room for the template. If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. Two households cooking in one kitchen means two of most things, and the run has to carry a second sink or a second oven without losing its working length. Upstands are the cheapest way to finish several kitchens consistently, and they come out of the offcuts the tops leave behind. Panels for every unit, cut in one go.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. Lime plaster on nine inch brick has been patched with gypsum wherever a radiator or a socket has moved, and the two finish at different depths. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Full height needs a flat wall and a finished electrician.

If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. A downstand sets the panel height, not the wall units.