Splashbacks and upstands in De Beauvoir Town

Yes. De Beauvoir Town is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N1. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Hackney. Where a loading concession applies at all, it holds only while something is being carried, which makes it a way to unload rather than a way to park. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. A long carry turns a light piece into an awkward one. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Listing and conservation conditions apply to a good number of these, which constrains what can be altered around the kitchen rather than what goes on top of the units. 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. What the plaster is stuck to matters more than its colour. 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. 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.

An inward-opening door swinging back against the wall leaves less clear opening than the frame measures, and a storm porch in front of it is tighter again. 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. Loading concessions differ from one zone to the next rather than following a single national rule, so what applied on the last job proves nothing about this one. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Panels come across in one pass with the route already cleared.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Upstands turn batch offcuts into finished rooms. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. The cheap way to make eight kitchens look specified.

The return piece is the awkward one on a slab: short, full depth, and rarely nesting neatly against the long lengths, so yield rather than area is what moves the material figure. 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. Return ends are polished, not left sawn. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. The wall has to be ready.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. 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. Where a client wants a full-height piece behind the hob, it usually sits in the old chimney recess, and that recess is rarely square top to bottom or side to side, so it has to be templated as a trapezium rather than a rectangle. A reveal in a thick wall changes where the panel stops.

Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Nothing is payable in advance of the template. An under-stairs cupboard eats one end of most of these kitchens, and the run stops at a door that has to keep opening. Splashbacks come off the same slab run as the tops, which means the decision has to be made before fabrication starts. A return into a reveal is its own scribed piece.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. 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. Scribed along the top edge as well.

Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Nothing in a house of this age is square, and the kitchen is usually the part that has been altered most often. Socket positions, sill heights and wall flatness are the three things that settle this, and all three are properties of the building. Panel thickness changes what the sockets need behind them.