Splashbacks and upstands in Blackfriars

Yes. Blackfriars is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC4V, EC4Y. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Standing a panel on the pavement is the last resort. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

A riverside block is a managed building with a booked goods lift, a loading bay and a concierge, and all three have to line up on the same day. The plasterboard is genuinely flat here, so a full-height splashback sits well and a slim upstand looks almost redundant, but the sockets are the problem, because they are set out to the developer's original kitchen and often land at odd heights or right on a joint line. Dry lining behind a panel needs a fixing plan of its own. A lightweight stud partition will not carry a breakfast bar or a peninsula end, and stone finds that out faster than laminate ever did. 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 sill caps the upstand before anything else does.

Goods lifts and passenger lifts fail differently: one has a rated load that matters, the other has a door aperture that matters more. 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 frame they travel in needs the clearance as well. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Handling is where these pieces get damaged.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop fabrication 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. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Less to clean, for whoever cleans it. 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. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. Panels for every unit, cut in one go.

A peninsula is an island with one end tied to a run, which means the join between them has to be planned rather than allowed to happen. 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. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

Dot-and-dab plasterboard sounds solid and is hollow behind, so anything fixed through it has to hit a dab or a batten rather than a void. 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. A downstand sets the panel height, not the wall units. Any socket you intend to move must be moved and re-plastered before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece of stone. 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. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. What repeats across flats is recorded once and repeated.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. The free end is what needs deciding early: square edge, mitred apron down the end, or a full waterfall to the floor, and a waterfall is cut in sequence off the same part of the slab. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. Long walls break where the worktop breaks.

The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. Taped internal angles in plasterboard belly at the corner, so the run picks up a few millimetres over the last 300mm and a plan-angle mitre will not close. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. Behind the boxing it becomes two pieces.

The carcasses stay put. Only the surface changes. On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. Full-height panels are the awkward thing to move, light enough to lift and long enough to flex on the way. One trip is always better than three.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Handrails, mirrors and a sloping ceiling panel all eat into the usable diagonal, and none of them appear on a lift specification sheet. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. A vertical break is easier to live with than a cracked panel.