Splashbacks and upstands in Custom House

Yes. Custom House is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E16. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Newham. Where the bay sits some distance from the core, the carry across the car park is the longest leg of the day and gets boarded and lit. 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 come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The back door frequently opens straight into the kitchen, which is the best carry route in the house and the one people forget to mention. That leaves a ragged band right where the upstand has to sit, which is fine for a 100mm upstand that covers it, but a full-height splashback needs the wall made good first or it will rock on the high spots. A chimney breast breaks the run and the panels follow it. An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. 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. Nothing gets hidden behind a full-height panel.

A loading bay or a red route puts a clock on the unload, so the pieces come off in the order they will be fitted rather than the order they were loaded. 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. The goods lift has its own booking sheet, and a bay slot without a lift slot only gets the stone as far as the lobby. 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.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Six kitchens, one socket layout, one panel drawing. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. The annexe gets the same panel as the main run.

Where the aisle is too tight the usual answer is a reduced-depth top on one side, and a 500mm run is a different cut, a different sink and a different drainer to a 600mm 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. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. 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. The reveal decides where the stone dies. The old tiling must be off and the wall made good and dry before templating, not on fitting day. Managed stock usually comes with its own rules about working hours, waste, and who is allowed on site. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. A second visit needs a second permission.

The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. Every piece is dry-assembled on the bench before it is loaded, so a fabrication mistake is found in the workshop rather than in your kitchen. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. 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.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. 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.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Original quarry-tiled floors sit lower than a later screed, so a run crossing that junction needs the units packed to one level. The ragged band left when old tiles and laminate come off together is what usually decides upstand over full height. Where the plaster undulates, the shorter piece wins.

A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. The kitchen sits at the rear with a door to the garden and a window over the sink, so the useful run is broken into two short lengths. Behind a hob the panel runs to the underside of the extractor, and that height is settled on site rather than on the plan. The tile bed comes off before anything is measured.