Splashbacks and upstands in Canada Water

Yes. Canada Water is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE16. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. Building management is often the real gate rather than the bay itself, since the barrier, the shutter and the lift each need someone with a fob. 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. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Floors are chipboard deck on timber joists, which moves enough that level is taken with the units loaded rather than empty. The plasterboard is flat enough for a full-height panel; it is the socket positions that cause the trouble. Cut from the same slab run as the tops. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the 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. An upstand rides what a panel exposes.

Where the lift will not take the longest run we design a join in rather than gamble, because a piece that will not go up has to go back on the van. 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. Full height goes in only where the way in allows full height. Time-limited bays are camera-enforced across a lot of managed estates, so the unload runs to the clock and the van moves off afterwards. 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.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. That is the local housing talking rather than anything about the job. It is priced, cut and fitted no differently here than anywhere else we cover. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. Reordered next year, it will not match.

Two runs of similar length nest as a pair off one slab, and if one of them grows by a few hundred millimetres the pair stops fitting and the yield changes for both. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Panel height is set by the extractor. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. 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. Make the wall good first, or accept the detail. 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. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Two trades, two budgets, one drawing.

Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Upstands are the cheapest way to finish several kitchens consistently, and they come out of the offcuts the tops leave behind. Full height behind the hob is less for a tenant to scrub.

A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. Where the aisle is too tight the usual answer is a reduced-depth top on one side, and a 500mm run is a different cut, a different sink and a different drainer to a 600mm one. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. Every internal corner is two pieces, not one.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. 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. Scribed, dubbed out, or set proud. Pick one.

A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. A gated development controls when a van gets in, where it can stand and for how long, and none of that gets decided on the morning. A full-height panel is bonded across its back and carried on the upstand line rather than left hanging on adhesive alone. Decided before fabrication starts.