Splashbacks and upstands in Brent Cross

Yes. Brent Cross is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW4, NW2. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Wind on an open street matters more than the walk does. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The kitchen sits at the rear with a door to the garden and a window over the sink, so the useful run is broken into two short lengths. 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. Dry lining behind a panel needs a fixing plan of its own. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. 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.

Managed buildings allow deliveries through the lift only between set hours, and a day that overruns them finishes with the last piece still on the pavement. 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. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. Standing a panel on the pavement is the last resort.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. That says something about the housing round here, not about the work. Quote, cut and fit are the same here as on any other part of the patch. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Panels for every unit, cut in one go. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. A spare panel is cheaper now than next year.

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. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. External corners are mitred, not butted. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. 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 sill caps the upstand before anything else does. The old tiling must be off and the wall made good and dry before templating, not on fitting day. Someone who expects to still be there in ten years asks different questions: how a honed finish marks, what a sealer does and does not do, and whether a chip by the sink can be repaired in place. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Full height is decided before fabrication, not after.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. Panel height is set by the extractor.

An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. These were built in short runs of six or eight houses, so the party walls are solid brick and the rear elevation is a straight line with no outriggers. The ragged band left when old tiles and laminate come off together is what usually decides upstand over full height. Old plaster rarely gives you a flat metre.

What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. The panel behind a hob is usually the tallest piece in the kitchen, and its height is set by the extractor above it rather than by the wall cupboards either side. Every internal corner is two pieces, not one.

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. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. Where only one car serves the building a breakdown on the morning halts the job outright, so the fallback route is worked out at template rather than on the landing. 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. A vertical break is easier to live with than a cracked panel.