Splashbacks and upstands in Covent Garden

Yes. Covent Garden is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are WC2. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. 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 basement kitchen has a flagged or concrete floor laid straight onto the ground, so it is solid, cold and rarely within ten millimetres of level. 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. Sockets in a stud wall move more easily than sockets in brick. A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. 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.

The top step is rarely the end of it, because a door swinging out onto the landing has to be held back before a piece can come off the flight. 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. Break positions are chosen for the carry. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Long panels and long carries do not mix.

It is one of the three that come up most, though worktop replacement comes up more. Nothing changes between them: same template, same workshop, same installers. 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. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. One damaged panel, one twin already on the shelf. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Sockets move on site far more often than plans do.

Where the sink and the hob face each other across the aisle, everything carried between them crosses the walkway, and that is the one movement the shape cannot design out. 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. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. 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. A bowed wall shows on a panel and hides under an upstand. 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. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Agreed with whoever is paying for both.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Gas, waste and later wiring were boxed in against the wall long after the house was built, and that boxing is what the run has to clear. 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.

There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. A run that stops in mid-air at the open end needs a finished end rather than a cut one, and that end takes the same edge work as the whole front. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Upstands follow the return round the corner.

Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. The closet wing is a narrow projection at the back with windows on two sides, which leaves very little continuous wall for a run. A 100mm upstand bedded on silicone is the honest answer where the plaster bows, because it rides what a tall panel exposes. A reveal in a thick wall changes where the panel stops.

Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. Mitred returns come from one place in the slab.