Splashbacks and upstands in Cheam

Yes. Cheam is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SM2, SM3. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Sutton. Block paving bedded on sand can rut under a fully loaded van, and that is said to the customer beforehand rather than explained afterwards. 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. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

The rear room has a bay or a wide window onto the garden, so the sink length is short and the real working length is on the return. Lath-and-plaster on the party wall and the chimney breast returns almost never runs true, so a 100mm upstand bedded on silicone is the honest answer here, it rides the bow and hides the junction the worktop can never close on its own. The tile bed comes off before anything is measured. 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. Scribed, dubbed out, or set proud. Pick one.

A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. 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. They stand upright in the van and stay upright until they are on the wall. Where the drive is shared, the half-hour the van spends in the way is agreed with the neighbour in advance rather than apologised for at the time. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. Panels come across in one pass with the route already cleared.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication and worktop installation. 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. Two households cooking in one kitchen means two of most things, and the run has to carry a second sink or a second oven without losing its working length. 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. An annexe kitchen is often built to keep a parent independent, so worktop height and reach matter as much as the material does. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Reordered next year, it will not match.

Power and waste come up through the floor, and where they surface decides which cabinet can hold a sink and which one cannot. 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. Corners get their own pieces. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. The obstruction sets the joint, not the wall. The chimney breast recess must be replastered and fully dry, and the hob and extractor positions fixed, before anyone templates a full-height piece into it. Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Heights that have to match are cut to match.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. Height follows the sill, not the plan.

Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. Say what you have and where it came from before anything is booked, because thickness and batch decide what can be done with it. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. A family adding a self-contained unit is paying for the whole conversion, and the worktop is one line in a much longer job. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. Full height behind the hob is less for a tenant to scrub.

Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. The external wall on the passage side has never been rendered, so it is cold, solid and honest to fix into. Where a client wants a full-height piece behind the hob, it usually sits in the old chimney recess, and that recess is rarely square top to bottom or side to side, so it has to be templated as a trapezium rather than a rectangle. What the wall can take decides how tall the stone goes.

A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. The larder under the stairs is usually still there and still opens into the kitchen, so the run stops at a door that cannot be moved. A 100mm upstand bedded on silicone is the honest answer where the plaster bows, because it rides what a tall panel exposes. Old walls lean back, and a tall panel shows it.