Splashbacks and upstands in Borough

Yes. Borough is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE1. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. 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. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. That is why they are crated the way they are. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The lift is a small passenger car with a gate, and the alternative is a stone stair winding round the shaft with a turn at every half-landing. Each return needs its own piece with a mitred or butted external corner, and those pieces should come off the same slab so the movement lines up across the corner. Decided before fabrication starts. Listed and conservation frontages mean no hoisting through windows, so the piece has to be dimensioned around the tightest turn on the stair.

Conservation area frontages with railings, a lightwell and a steep flight down to the basement door, plus a strictly enforced CPZ - the practical route is often the front steps and a hall turn rather than any side access. Everything comes through the front door and down the hall, so the tightest point on the route is usually the newel post at the foot of the stairs. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. It decides panel size before anything is cut.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop replacement. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Sockets final before template. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Siliconed to the worktop, never grouted.

Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. 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. Joint placement is a decision, not an accident. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. 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. Make the wall good first, or accept the detail. The riser boxing must be finished in its final form and any access panel positions agreed before the template, since the stone is set out around them. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. Splashbacks are cut from the same slab run as the tops, so they have to be decided before fabrication, not after. Same slab run as the tops.