Splashbacks and upstands in East Barnet

Yes. East Barnet is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EN4. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. Where the drive is shared, the half-hour the van spends in the way is agreed with the neighbour in advance rather than apologised for at the time. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Kerb to kitchen is measured before the panels are unstrapped. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Where the original steel windows survive at the rear, the frame sits almost flush with the inside face and there is no reveal to lose a joint in. These kitchens are nearly always retiled at least twice, and stripping the old tiles takes the bottom course of plaster with it because the original laminate top ran underneath the tiles rather than up to them. Nothing goes on a wall that will not hold it. Casement handles and stays swing down into the space above the worktop, so the clearance that counts is the one measured with the window open. 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.

Where the garden is level and the back door is wide the pieces get staged outside on trestles and brought in one at a time as the fitters are ready for them. 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 panel that would need turning indoors is turned outside instead. A step up from the drive to the threshold turns the last two metres into a lift, and a lift is where two pairs of hands become the minimum. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Wind on an open street matters more than the walk does.

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. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. The annexe gets the same panel as the main run. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. A repeated spec needs a repeatable splashback.

Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. 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. External corners are mitred, not butted. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. 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. Behind the boxing it becomes two pieces. The old tiling must be off and the wall made good and dry before templating, not on fitting day. The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Fitted with the tops if it was decided with them.

A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. An island carries its own edge detail all the way round, so a mitred 100mm apron on four sides is four mitres cut, bonded and polished before the piece ever leaves the bench. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Panel height is set by the extractor.

Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. How much slab you hold matters: upstands and any remake have to come out of the same batch. If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. Upstands are the cheapest way to finish several kitchens consistently, and they come out of the offcuts the tops leave behind. One damaged panel, one twin already on the shelf.

A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Grass and gravel will not take a loaded trolley, so a boarded track gets laid from the gate to the door before the first piece moves. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. What can be got into the room decides the height above the worktop.

An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. A step up to a patio or a raised threshold at the back door means the piece is lifted rather than rolled, and that is where the crew size gets decided. Panels travel on edge in a frame, and the frame needs the same clearance the finished piece does. They stand upright in the van and stay upright until they are on the wall.