Splashbacks and upstands in Deptford

Yes. Deptford is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE8. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. A timed school street shuts the road either side of the school day, so the van goes in between those two windows or it does not go 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 long carry turns a light piece into an awkward one. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

The communal stair is wide and handsome and the flat door at the top of it is a standard leaf, which is where a long piece stops. A 100mm upstand bedded on silicone is the honest answer where the plaster bows, because it rides what a tall panel exposes. A hundred millimetres covers more than it looks. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. 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. The obstruction sets the joint, not the wall.

Bollards, planters and a one-way service road can turn what looks like a ten-metre carry into a fifty-metre one. 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. They come in last so nothing is carried past them. An event-day suspension can override a bay that is perfectly usable the rest of the week, so a booked space gets checked again nearer the time. 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.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop fabrication. 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. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. 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 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. 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.

A tall bank of housings at one end takes a chunk out of the working run, so the usable length of that side is always less than the length of the wall behind it. 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. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. 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. 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. Access is arranged through a managing agent or a scheme office rather than with the household directly, so a date gets confirmed once in writing and moving it costs a fortnight. 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.

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. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. Scribed along the top edge as well.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. A full-depth tall unit projects past the worktop line, and the run has to be scribed against its side panel instead of carrying on past it. 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.

Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. A mitred external return around it has to come from the same position in the slab, or the pattern visibly steps at the corner. The obstruction breaks the length, every time.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Kitchens in the upper flats often sit in the return wing at half-landing level, so there are three or four steps inside the flat before the room is reached at all. A full-height panel in a chimney recess is templated as a trapezium, since that recess is square in neither direction. The plaster behind it is the real question.