Splashbacks and upstands in Downe

Yes. Downe is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are BR6. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bromley. A skip, a delivery lorry or a run of scaffolding takes the frontage the van needed, so the street is worth a look the day before rather than on the morning. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. One trip is always better than three. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

Ceiling beams cross the room at a height that decides where a piece can be stood on edge and where it cannot. These runs are long and often include a range recess, so the splashback is nearly always more than one piece and the joint placement matters, put it in a corner or over a hob centre line, not randomly in the middle of a clear run. A reveal in a thick wall changes where the panel stops. Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. 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. A downstand sets the panel height, not the wall units.

Boxed-in pipework running along the skirting looks harmless until a loaded trolley has to pass it. 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. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. That is why they are crated the way they are.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication and worktop installation. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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.

Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Return ends are polished, not left sawn. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

A window board sitting below finished worktop height leaves two choices, drop the top under it or notch the stone around it, and both cost more than a straight run. 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. Behind the boxing it becomes two pieces. The range and extractor must be sited and the window cill finished before the template, as both fix the vertical limits of the splashback. Where two people share the decision it helps to know early which of them is settling the edge profile and which is settling the budget, because it is rarely the same person for both. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Low maintenance is the honest choice for a let.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. No money changes hands before the template. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Big rooms hide their falls, and the difference from one corner of a five metre floor to the other is measured in tens of millimetres. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Behind the hob is where full height earns its cost.

What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. A cill projecting forward of the plaster line pushes the back edge out, and the units then stand off the wall by that amount for the whole length. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. Nothing gets hidden behind a full-height panel.

Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. Corner sinks and corner hobs sit exactly where the joint wants to be, so on an L the cut-out positions get settled before the join positions do. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. Panel widths answer to the slab before the wall.

Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Where the staircase comes down into the hall the bottom treads project into the width, and nothing about that can be moved for the day. 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.