Splashbacks and upstands in Cranham

Yes. Cranham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM14. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. On a drive that only takes one vehicle nose-in, the van has to reverse the whole length of it to get back out, which decides which way it goes in. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. A short bay slot is when the tall pieces get damaged. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

Base units from the seventies and eighties are often only 500mm deep, so a 600mm stone top overhangs at the front and the doors want checking against 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. The wall build-up sets the depth of the return. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. 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. A breast return is scribed on three edges.

The tail lift is still the pinch point, because the piece has to be walked off it onto the trolley while it is sitting at chest height. 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. Joint positions follow from that. The distance from the standing to the actual kitchen door is the number that counts, since plenty of drives finish at a side gate and a garden path. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Kerb to kitchen is measured before the panels are unstrapped.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop replacement. That is the local housing talking rather than anything about the job. It is priced, cut and fitted no differently here than anywhere else we cover. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Grout lines are the first thing to fail in a let. 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. Six kitchens, one socket layout, one panel drawing.

Three runs means two internal corners, and each corner is a decision about mitre or butt joint before anything is nested. 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. Scribe to the wall rather than stretch the panel. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. 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. Set it proud on a subframe and the gap becomes deliberate. Boiler position, flue and any pipework drops must be settled and the wall skimmed level before templating the splashback run. An owner paying for this directly tends to want the reasoning as much as the number, so a quote that explains why a join sits where it does is worth more than a cheaper one that does not. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. The wall trade answers to a different budget.

Thickness has to be known before quoting, since it decides the edge, the cut-outs and what the units carry. How the slab has been stored is worth telling us, because stone kept flat is not stone off a rack. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. 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. The annexe gets the same panel as the main run.

An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Suction lifters need a clean dry face to hold, so in the wet the pads come off and the piece goes back to being carried on webbing by hand. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. It decides panel size before anything is cut.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. An upstand rides what a panel exposes.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. The kitchen is at the front or the back depending on the plan, and which it is decides whether there is a rear door on the route at all. 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. Nothing goes on a wall that will not hold it.