Splashbacks and upstands in Hampton Hill

Yes. Hampton Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TW12. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Richmond upon Thames. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. One trip is always better than three. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The stair from the street is narrow with a tight turn at the top, which caps piece length well below anything the run itself needs. Patched plaster next to original render sits at different depths, and that step is exactly what an upstand covers. Decided before fabrication starts. Flats above the shops have a stair with a tight top landing, so anything over 2.4m has to be jointed - measure the landing, not just the stair width.

High Street loading is timed and the parade is busy, so flats above shops mean a street door, a straight steep stair and a right-angle turn at the top; the residential roads behind have driveways and are far easier. Weight tells on a staircase more than anywhere else, because there is nowhere to set a piece down mid-flight and no way to change your grip once it is moving. 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.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Same batch, same run, same day. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Sockets final before template.

An L can be mitred at the corner for a continuous look or butt-jointed over the gable, and the two are different money and different risk. 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. Corners get their own pieces. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. 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. Boiler position, flue and any pipework drops must be settled and the wall skimmed level before templating the splashback run. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. The wall has to be ready.