Splashbacks and upstands in Dalston

Yes. Dalston is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E8. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Hackney. 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. Long panels and long carries do not mix. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

The original stair has an open well running the full height of the building, which occasionally lets a long piece go up vertically where it would never take the turns. A 100mm upstand bedded on silicone is the honest answer where the plaster bows, because it rides what a tall panel exposes. Height, returns and sockets, all settled on site. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. 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 obstruction sets the joint, not the wall.

Counting hands matters more than counting metres on a staircase, because a piece two people lift off a van still wants three on the flight and a fourth watching the trailing corner. 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. A tall panel cannot be tilted to clear a turn, so it is sized not to need to. 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. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. Off the van last, and never in a hurry.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Whichever it is, the template and the fitters do not change. 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. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. The extension electrician finishes after the drawing did. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Upstands turn batch offcuts into finished rooms.

An aisle under a metre stops being a working space the moment two people are in it, and the depth of the tops either side is what decides whether that happens. 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. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. 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. Height follows the sill, not the plan. 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. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. 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.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Lower ground floor kitchens are reached by a stair with a winder in it, and the head height over that winder is lower than the room at either end. 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.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. A cast iron soil stack runs down the outside of the rear wall, so moving the sink means a fresh penetration through solid brick. Splashbacks come off the same slab run as the tops, which means the decision has to be made before fabrication starts. Panel thickness changes what the sockets need behind them.

Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. Full-height panels are the awkward thing to move, light enough to lift and long enough to flex on the way. The crate exists for the walk from the van.

Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. A dishwasher door on one side and an oven door on the other cannot both stand open in a narrow aisle, so which appliance goes where matters more in this shape than in any other. 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.