Splashbacks and upstands in Hammersmith

Yes. Hammersmith is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W6. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of the borough. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. A tall panel and a timed bay is the worst combination here. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The back addition is a narrow two-storey outrigger with a single external wall, and the kitchen galley runs the length of it. 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. Height, returns and sockets, all settled on site. Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. 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, dubbed out, or set proud. Pick one.

A hall radiator or a coat hook at shoulder height takes a hundred millimetres off the usable width, and a hundred millimetres is often the entire margin. 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 vertical break is easier to live with than a cracked panel. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. They go in with the first load where the stop is short.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication and worktop installation. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It gets quoted, cut and fitted exactly as it would anywhere else on the patch. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Upstands turn batch offcuts into finished rooms. 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. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. The cheap way to make eight kitchens look specified.

Whether it comes off the same slab as the run behind it or needs one of its own is settled by laying both against the usable area of the slab, not by adding the metres up. 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. Every internal corner is two pieces, not one. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. 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 sets the joint, not the wall. 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. One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Full height is decided before fabrication, not after.

The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. 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. A chimney breast breaks a panel run regardless of the drawing.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. A single red line has hours and a double red line does not, and the difference decides whether an early start is a plan or a penalty. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. Rushing the last piece off the van is how panels break.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. There is usually a step down into the back addition, so the kitchen floor and the hall floor are not the same level and neither of them is flat. Splashbacks come off the same slab run as the tops, which means the decision has to be made before fabrication starts. Boxed pipework decides the panel width before taste does.

Supply through us runs £110 to £550 per square metre for the slab alone, which is the line you would be removing. Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. 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. Upstands are the cheapest way to finish several kitchens consistently, and they come out of the offcuts the tops leave behind. Wipe-down beats sealed grout on a turnaround.