Splashbacks and upstands in Canons Park

Yes. Canons Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are HA8, HA7. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Harrow. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. A long carry turns a light piece into an awkward one. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The original fitted dresser and the vent to outside air have often left their openings behind the units, unfilled and unrecorded. Mansion block kitchens are full of boxed-in soil stacks, gas risers and heating pipework, and the boxing is usually plywood or plasterboard that stops short of the ceiling, so the splashback run gets broken up by returns rather than running clean wall to wall. Cut from the same slab run as the tops. Where the sill lands inside the height an upstand would occupy there is no upstand, and the stone either dies into the reveal or stops short of it. 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.

There is no leaning a piece against a wall halfway up, so any flight longer than a dozen treads is planned around a rest point on a landing. 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 panel is sized to the turn, not to the wall alone. A shared drive is only useful if the neighbour is not the one parked behind the van, so we ask which side the standing belongs to before the date is set. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Panels come across in one pass with the route already cleared.

It is inside the three we do most here, under worktop replacement. Either way: same template, same workshop, same fitters. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. One conversion drawing repeats its mistakes six times. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. Cut now, stored for the next void.

Some of them overhang on two sides at once, and each side is worked out separately, because the load on an edge people lean against is not the load on an edge people walk past. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Joint placement is a decision, not an accident. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Casement handles and stays swing down into the space above the worktop, so the clearance that counts is the one measured with the window open. 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. The sill caps the upstand before anything else does. 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. Flats bought out of managed stock keep the original kitchen dimensions long after the ownership changed, so the layout says very little about who is paying for the work. Full-height panels need the wall made good first, which is another trade and another timescale. Two trades, two budgets, one drawing.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. No money changes hands before the template. This is a logistics job before it is a stone job, and the lift car is usually the single biggest constraint on the design. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Same slab run, same day, same batch.

On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. The units stay where they are and only the surface changes. Drives with a dropped kerb and a tight turn-in take a long van at an angle, and that angle decides which side the tail lift can work from. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. A short bay slot is when the tall pieces get damaged.

A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. Corners get their own pieces.

A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. Thick external walls, deep window reveals and boxed risers mean the runs are templated to what is there rather than to a rectangle. Splashbacks come off the same slab run as the tops, which means the decision has to be made before fabrication starts. The wall decides, not the brochure.