Splashbacks and upstands in Coombe (Kingston)

Yes. Coombe (Kingston) is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are KT2. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Kingston upon Thames. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. 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. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A bay-fronted terrace has a long hall running past the stairs to the kitchen, so the hall turn caps the piece length before the run length does. 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. Cut from the same slab run as the tops. These are drawing-office jobs - book-matched islands, mitred 100mm aprons and full-height panels, so the slab is chosen off the rack before templating.

Private gated estate roads with entry codes and a caretaker, long in-and-out driveways with ample standing, and rear garden access wide enough to bring stone round the outside instead of through the house. Estate roads are often too tight for a long-wheelbase van to turn, so the carry starts a good deal further from the door than a map suggests. 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. Joint positions follow from that.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop design & quotation, worktop fabrication and worktop installation. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. Where an annexe has been built or converted, its floor and its walls are newer than the main house and behave differently under the same run. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Siliconed to the worktop, never grouted. Extended households run kitchens hard, and that pushes the specification towards granite or sintered stone rather than a light quartz. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. Sockets final before template.

Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. The joint to the worktop is siliconed, never grouted. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. 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. 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. 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. Same slab run as the tops.