Splashbacks and upstands in Ealing Broadway

Yes. Ealing Broadway is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W5. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Ealing. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Off the van last, and never in a hurry. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

The flats are stacked identically, so the kitchen above sits directly over this one and its waste passes through the same boxing. Mansion block kitchens are full of boxed-in soil stacks, gas risers and heating pipework, and the boxing is usually plywood or plasterboard that stops short of the ceiling, so the splashback run gets broken up by returns rather than running clean wall to wall. Old plaster rarely gives you a flat metre. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. 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 bowed wall shows on a panel and hides under an upstand.

A car ceiling at 2.2m sets the tallest thing that will stand in it, and the trap panel and light fitting take a slice off even that. 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. Two people to a panel, however light it looks on the van. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. The crate exists for the walk from the van.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. 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. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Same batch, or the join will say so. A managed portfolio tends to repeat one specification across every flat, which keeps later repairs and replacements simple to order. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Ordered together, or the match is luck.

The joint where a peninsula meets the main run wants a gable directly under it, and where the units do not offer one, steel goes in to carry that joint instead. 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. A joint behind a tap is a joint on show. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. 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. Mitred returns come from one place in the slab. The riser boxing must be finished in its final form and any access panel positions agreed before the template, since the stone is set out around them. One staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. Full-height panels need the wall made good first, which is another trade and another timescale. The wall has to be ready.

Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. A goods lift booked by the hour puts a clock on the whole delivery, so pieces go up in a planned order and nothing is handled twice. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. The ceiling over a staircase limits a standing panel as much as the walls.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. The lift is a small passenger car with a gate, and the alternative is a stone stair winding round the shaft with a turn at every half-landing. Each return needs its own piece with a mitred or butted external corner, and those pieces should come off the same slab so the movement lines up across the corner. The wall gets made good first or the gap shows.

Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. The pier takes a joint against it, not across it.

Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. External walls are thick and the run under the window sits in a deep reveal that has to be templated rather than assumed square. A panel stops short of anything that has to stay accessible, and the cut edge is polished rather than hidden behind a bead. Solid plaster on brick takes a panel; a hollow wall wants thought.