Splashbacks and upstands in Clapham Junction

Yes. Clapham Junction is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW11. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Wandsworth. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. That is why they are crated the way they are. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

These flats have been reconfigured more than once, so the kitchen often sits in what was a bedroom with services run a long way to reach it. Post-war terraces are typically blockwork or early lightweight block with a hard render coat, and the kitchen has usually been reconfigured at least once, leaving patched areas of newer plaster next to original render that sit at different depths. Old walls lean back, and a tall panel shows it. 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 is usually what pushes a job towards a 100mm upstand instead of a full-height panel, because an upstand rides what a panel exposes. Scribed, dubbed out, or set proud. Pick one.

Pendant fittings over the stairwell and anything hung on the half-landing come down first, because a piece on edge sweeps a wider arc than the people carrying it. 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. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. Long panels and long carries do not mix.

It is on the short list of three for this patch, with worktop replacement first. Same template, same workshop, same fitters whichever it is. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. One damaged panel, one twin already on the shelf. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. Sockets move on site far more often than plans do.

Both runs are in view at the same time, so the two pieces are taken off the same area of slab and the veining is set to run the same way on each side. 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.

A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. 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 obstruction sets the joint, not the wall. Boiler position, flue and any pipework drops must be settled and the wall skimmed level before templating the splashback run. One staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. 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.

The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. No payment is due before the template. Blockwork with a hard render that has been patched over decades looks modern and behaves nothing like it. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. The flatter the wall, the taller the stone.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. A communal flight is out of use while a piece is on it, so the carry is timed so nobody is trying to pass on a half-landing. 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.

An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. A galley closed at one end takes a short return across the top, and that little piece carries the same edge work, the same handling and nearly the same cost as a full length. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. Upstands follow the return round the corner.

Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. The front rooms sit over the shop window with a structural beam beneath them, and the floor either side of that beam is not at one level. That step is exactly what an upstand covers and what a full-height panel exposes, so unless the wall is skimmed level end to end, a 100mm band is the reliable choice. What the plaster is stuck to matters more than its colour.