Splashbacks and upstands in Cyprus

Yes. Cyprus is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E6. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Newham. Where the drive falls away from the house the trolley wants to run, and where it climbs the same load has to be pushed the whole way up. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. A short bay slot is when the tall pieces get damaged. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

An infill house is built to modern standards on an old plot, so the room is square even though the site around it is not. The plasterboard is flat enough for a full-height panel; it is the socket positions that cause the trouble. What the wall can take decides how tall the stone goes. Taped internal angles in plasterboard belly at the corner, so the run picks up a few millimetres over the last 300mm and a plan-angle mitre will not close. 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. The reveal decides where the stone dies.

Open-tread and cantilevered stairs give nothing to lean a piece against, so the whole weight stays on the crew for the full length of the flight. 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. A tall panel cannot be tilted to clear a turn, so it is sized not to need to. A visitor or a neighbour parked on the drive is a five-minute problem at eight in the morning and an hour-long one at eleven. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. Kerb to kitchen is measured before the panels are unstrapped.

One of the three we are asked for most, although worktop replacement is asked for more. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. The person choosing the worktop is not the person using it, and that shifts the balance from appearance towards running cost. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Cut now, stored for the next void. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. Same batch, or the join will say so.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening 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. Upstands follow the return round the corner. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

Where a partition has been built off the floor screed rather than off the slab, it moves, and a mitre bonded across that corner is the first thing to open. 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. Any socket you intend to move must be moved and re-plastered before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece of stone. Nobody reseals a worktop annually in a let property, so a material that depends on being resealed is the wrong specification however well it photographs. Full-height panels need the wall made good first, which is another trade and another timescale. Fitted with the tops if it was decided with them.

A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Access is a question about the plot rather than the house: a narrow frontage between older buildings with nowhere obvious to stand a van. A full-height panel is bonded across its back and carried on the upstand line rather than left hanging on adhesive alone. Old walls lean back, and a tall panel shows it.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. The hob panel is sized after the extractor, not before.

Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. The panel behind a hob is usually the tallest piece in the kitchen, and its height is set by the extractor above it rather than by the wall cupboards either side. A joint behind a tap is a joint on show.

What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. A handrail that has to come off before a piece will pass is twenty minutes at the start of the day, and it goes back on the wall before we leave. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. Panels are carried on edge from the tail lift to the wall.