Splashbacks and upstands in Burnt Oak

Yes. Burnt Oak is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are HA8. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. The goods lift has its own booking sheet, and a bay slot without a lift slot only gets the stone as far as the lobby. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Wind on an open street matters more than the walk does. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

Windows and doors were replaced across whole streets on one programme, so the kitchen window is a plastic frame in the old opening with a deep lined reveal. That suits a full-height piece, because a large flat panel bonded across its back is more stable on concrete than a run of small tiles ever was. Nothing goes on a wall that will not hold it. An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. 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.

A tiled hall floor takes a dropped corner badly, so boards go down over the tiles before anything comes through the door. 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. It travels on edge, so the clearance is checked on edge. A bay shared across a parade of shops turns over all day, so the arrival time matters more than the length of the booking does. 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.

It is one of the three that come up most, though worktop replacement comes up more. Nothing changes between them: same template, same workshop, same installers. 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. Plot spec panels are ordered by the plot, not the room. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. One conversion drawing repeats its mistakes six times.

Where a run finishes hard against a wall the last few millimetres are scribed, and where it finishes in open floor it is cut square and polished, which is two different jobs on one length. 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. Panel height is set by the extractor. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. 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. A downstand sets the panel height, not the wall units. Any surface trunking or conduit has to be rerouted or accepted and boxed before templating, because the stone cannot be scribed around a live conduit on site. 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. A deferred splashback still comes off this drawing.

What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. 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.

Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. Every internal doorway on the way through is another frame to clear, and internal doors come off their hinges rather than being propped open. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. Break positions are chosen for the carry.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. Where the external walls have been overboarded to insulate them the room is fifty millimetres smaller than the drawing and the board sounds hollow throughout. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Twenty millimetres of packing behind a panel is not a fix.

On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. The balcony door frequently opens off the kitchen, which puts a threshold, a draught and a well-used route through one end of the run. Splashbacks come off the same slab run as the tops, which means the decision has to be made before fabrication starts. The batch is held while the tops are cut, or the colour drifts.