Splashbacks and upstands in Forty Hill

Yes. Forty Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EN2. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Enfield. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. That is why they are crated the way they are. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

A small room puts the sink, hob and tap cut-outs close together on one short length, and the bridge of stone left between them decides whether it can be cut in one piece. 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. The wall makes that decision, not the brochure. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. 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. Make the wall good first, or accept the detail.

Garden routes carry their own hazards: a drain cover, a step up to a patio, wet decking, or a lawn that will not take a loaded trolley. 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 door frame catches a tall panel long before a short one. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. Long panels and long carries do not mix.

It sits second or third on this patch, behind worktop installation. Same template visit, same benches, same installers either way. 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. One damaged panel, one twin already on the shelf. 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. Sockets move on site far more often than plans do.

It is walked round rather than looked at from one side, so the direction the veining runs along it cannot be hidden against a wall the way it can on a perimeter run. 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. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. 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. Scribed, dubbed out, or set proud. Pick one. 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. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. A second visit needs a second permission.

A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. Some of them overhang on two sides at once, and each side is worked out separately, because the load on an edge people lean against is not the load on an edge people walk past. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. Every internal corner is two pieces, not one.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. There is no back addition on these, so the kitchen is the original rear room and the run is one wall long with a door at each end of it. A 100mm upstand bedded on silicone is the honest answer where the plaster bows, because it rides what a tall panel exposes. Cut from the same slab run as the tops.

Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. The extension electrician finishes after the drawing did.

Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. The original front door is narrow and the hall is often the only way in, which puts a ceiling on the longest single piece. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Height is taken at the shortest point of the run.