Splashbacks and upstands in Bushey Mead

Yes. Bushey Mead is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW20. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Merton. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. 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. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

The original kitchen was a small rear room with a larder and a back door, and nearly all of them have since been opened into the dining room. These kitchens are nearly always retiled at least twice, and stripping the old tiles takes the bottom course of plaster with it because the original laminate top ran underneath the tiles rather than up to them. The tile bed comes off before anything is measured. 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. 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.

A side gate and a back door mean the stone never goes through the house at all, which keeps the dust and most of the risk outside. 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. Suction lifters take a panel where hands cannot get a grip. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Standing a panel on the pavement is the last resort.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation 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. 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. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. A spare panel is cheaper now than next year. 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. Reordered next year, it will not match.

Knee room under a breakfast bar is measured from the face of the cabinets rather than from the edge of the stone, so a deep apron quietly eats the depth somebody actually gets to sit in. 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. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. 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. The old tiling must be off and the wall made good and dry before templating, not on fitting day. A quartz sample left on the counter for a week under the actual kitchen lights settles more arguments than any showroom, and an owner is the only person in a position to do that. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Two attendances need two people to be in.

Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. 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 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.

Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. The extension slab was poured to its own level, so there is a lip or a ramp where the new floor meets the original one. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Sockets cut in the shop, not on site.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. A mitred external return around it has to come from the same position in the slab, or the pattern visibly steps at the corner. Nothing gets hidden behind a full-height panel.

The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. Money does not move until the template is done. Rear extensions on these sit on shallow foundations, and the crack at the junction with the original wall tells you which way it has moved. Splashbacks come off the same slab run as the tops, which means the decision has to be made before fabrication starts. Height off the units, not off the old tiles.