Splashbacks and upstands in Eastcote

Yes. Eastcote is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are HA5, HA4. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hillingdon. A shared drive is only useful if the neighbour is not the one parked behind the van, so we ask which side the standing belongs to before the date is set. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Wind on an open street matters more than the walk does. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

The kitchen sits at the back with a door to the garden and a window over the sink, and both are on the wall the run wants. That leaves a ragged band right where the upstand has to sit, which is fine for a 100mm upstand that covers it, but a full-height splashback needs the wall made good first or it will rock on the high spots. Panels expose a wall; upstands forgive one. Where a column lands in the run the template plots its actual outline so the stone is cut to fit around it rather than stopped short and filled. 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. An upstand rides what a panel exposes.

The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. 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. It decides panel size before anything is cut. Drives with a dropped kerb and a tight turn-in take a long van at an angle, and that angle decides which side the tail lift can work from. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. Standing a panel on the pavement is the last resort.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop fabrication. 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 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. 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. 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. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. A repeated spec needs a repeatable splashback.

A hob cut-out and the floor penetration feeding it have to land over the same cabinet, and where they do not it is the stone that gets redrawn rather than the pipework. 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.

Exposed structure means the back edge is not a straight line at all, and a scribe of fifteen or twenty millimetres across a run is normal. 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. Make the wall good first, or accept the detail. The old tiling must be off and the wall made good and dry before templating, not on fitting day. Someone who expects to still be there in ten years asks different questions: how a honed finish marks, what a sealer does and does not do, and whether a chip by the sink can be repaired in place. 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.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. The floor is a solid slab with a screed over it, which is stable underfoot and rarely flat across a long run. The ragged band left when old tiles and laminate come off together is what usually decides upstand over full height. What the wall can take decides how tall the stone goes.

Nothing is payable in advance of the template. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. Suspended floors at the front meet a solid slab in the extension somewhere in the middle, and the units sit across the change. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Full height needs a flat wall and a finished electrician.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. A deep scribe comes out of the nest, so how far the stone has to be relieved changes which part of the slab the piece is cut from. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. Scribed, dubbed out, or set proud. Pick one.

Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. That is agreed at template, not on fitting day.