Splashbacks and upstands in Golden Lane

Yes. Golden Lane is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC1Y. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. 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. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Off the van last, and never in a hurry. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Front doors off the deck open into a lobby barely wider than the door itself, and the turn out of it is a right angle. The rear kitchen wall in ex-council flats and maisonettes is commonly dense in-situ concrete or blockwork with a thin skim, which means mechanical fixings are hard work and the splashback is held on adhesive rather than screwed. What the plaster is stuck to matters more than its colour. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. 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. Scribed along the top edge as well.

Where only one car serves the building a breakdown on the morning halts the job outright, so the fallback route is worked out at template rather than on the landing. 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. The ceiling over a staircase limits a standing panel as much as the walls. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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.

It sits second or third on this patch, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same benches, same installers either way. 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. Cut with the tops while the batch is open. 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. Cut as a set, so one can replace another.

A window at one end and a doorway at the other means one end of the run is lit from behind and the other is interrupted, so the two ends of the same length behave differently. 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 stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. 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. The obstruction breaks the length, every time. Any surface trunking or conduit has to be rerouted or accepted and boxed before templating, because the stone cannot be scribed around a live conduit on site. 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. Two budgets, settled before anything is cut.

A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. 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. A tall panel exposes what an upstand forgives.

Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. A car that answers every floor button pressed while a piece is standing in it needs to be held on the key, and the key usually lives at a desk that wants notice. 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 polished face close to an edge does not survive a knock.

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. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Deck access means a long open walkway from the lift or the stair to the front door, and that walk happens with the piece on edge in whatever weather there is. That suits a full-height piece, because a large flat panel bonded across its back is more stable on concrete than a run of small tiles ever was. A reveal in a thick wall changes where the panel stops.

Thickness has to be known before quoting, since it decides the edge, the cut-outs and what the units carry. 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. Damage in a let flat is settled as a deposit deduction, so a surface that can be repaired in place is worth more than one that has to be replaced whole. Upstands are the cheapest way to finish several kitchens consistently, and they come out of the offcuts the tops leave behind. The offcuts finish the room.