Splashbacks and upstands in Church Street

Yes. Church Street is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW8, W2. It is worked on our central London run, along with the rest of Westminster. A timed school street shuts the road either side of the school day, so the van goes in between those two windows or it does not go in. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Distance from tail lift to door is the whole risk here. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

Windows went in on a programme with plastic frames set into the original openings, so the frame is thicker, the glass area smaller and the reveal has a liner over the concrete. The rear kitchen wall in ex-council flats and maisonettes is commonly dense in-situ concrete or blockwork with a thin skim, which means mechanical fixings are hard work and the splashback is held on adhesive rather than screwed. Old plaster rarely gives you a flat metre. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. 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. Nothing gets hidden behind a full-height panel.

Timber nosings chip under a slipped edge, so the treads are covered along the whole flight rather than only at the landings. 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. An event-day suspension can override a bay that is perfectly usable the rest of the week, so a booked space gets checked again nearer the time. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. A long carry turns a light piece into an awkward one.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. 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. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Full height behind the hob is less for a tenant to scrub. 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. Grout lines are the first thing to fail in a let.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. 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. Long walls break where the worktop breaks. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. 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 reveal decides where the stone dies. 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. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Whoever specifies it signs the drawing.

What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. The units are untouched. Only the top of them changes. Where a road is shut for filming or for works the diversion adds distance to the carry even when parking itself was never the problem. 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.

If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. The landing serves two or three front doors that open outward onto it, so the space to turn a piece at the top of the flight is not entirely yours to use. 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. The wall gets made good first or the gap shows.

On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. Where the kitchen has been opened into the living room the opening was trimmed with a steel, and a stub of the old wall was left standing at one end. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. A return into a reveal is its own scribed piece.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. 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. A steep pitch shortens the tread and lengthens the reach, which leaves whoever is below carrying most of the weight for the full flight. 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. Break positions are chosen for the carry.