Splashbacks and upstands in Earl's Court

Yes. Earl's Court is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW5. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Kensington and Chelsea. Plenty of zones run at the weekend as well as through the week, so a Saturday date is not automatically the easier one to work. 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 measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

A top-floor conversion puts part of the kitchen under the slope of the roof, so the wall behind the run stops at head height along one side of the room. 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. A hundred millimetres covers more than it looks. Where a peninsula returns into a stud wall the load has to sit on the units, with the wall doing no more than steadying 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. The reveal decides where the stone dies.

The measurement that decides everything is the diagonal between the underside of the flight above and the outer edge of the turn below it. 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. A permit covering the street is permission to park rather than a space reserved on it, and on a full street the difference is the whole morning. 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 really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement 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. Batching several kitchens together is the one situation where buying a whole slab is cheaper per kitchen rather than more expensive. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Sockets final before template. A licensed shared house has fire-door and escape-route rules that decide how and when stone can be carried through the common parts. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Cut with the tops while the batch is open.

Peninsula tops are often the longest single piece in the kitchen, so if anything in the layout is going to force a second slab it is generally this one. 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. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

A lightweight stud partition will not carry a breakfast bar or a peninsula end, and stone finds that out faster than laminate ever did. 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. A bowed wall shows on a panel and hides under an upstand. 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 the owner is not local, the decisions happen remotely, so photographs and a clear itemised drawing carry more weight than a showroom visit ever would. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Committed early or dropped early, not left open.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. A hundred and forty years of alterations sit under the current kitchen, and the worktop is what has to sit flat on top of all of it. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Panel thickness changes what the sockets need behind them.

Units have to be fitted, fixed and level before templating, and it is better to hear that at the template than on the fitting day. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Dot-and-dab plasterboard sounds solid and is hollow behind, so anything fixed through it has to hit a dab or a batten rather than a void. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. Mitred returns come from one place in the slab.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. There is no leaning a piece against a wall halfway up, so any flight longer than a dozen treads is planned around a rest point on a landing. 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. Panels are carried on edge from the tail lift to the wall.

No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. Taped internal angles in plasterboard belly at the corner, so the run picks up a few millimetres over the last 300mm and a plan-angle mitre will not close. 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 pier takes a joint against it, not across it.