Splashbacks and upstands in Harrow Garden Village

Yes. Harrow Garden Village is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are HA2, HA5. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Harrow. The distance from the standing to the actual kitchen door is the number that counts, since plenty of drives finish at a side gate and a garden path. 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. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Solid brick with a render coat is firm to work against and out of plumb, so the scribe at worktop height is different from the one at plinth level. 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. Height, returns and sockets, all settled on site. Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. 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. A window board below worktop height ends the upstand argument.

A side gate hung to open outward against a fence post is narrower in use than it measures, and lifting the gate off its hinges is usually the quickest win on the route. 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. Joint positions follow from that. Deep gravel takes the wheels of a loaded trolley and holds them, so either boards go down or the pieces are carried. 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.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop fabrication. That is the local housing talking rather than anything about the job. It is priced, cut and fitted no differently here than anywhere else we cover. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. The cheap way to make eight kitchens look specified. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. Wipe-down beats sealed grout on a turnaround.

Knee room under a breakfast bar is measured from the face of the cabinets rather than from the edge of the stone, so a deep apron quietly eats the depth somebody actually gets to sit in. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Long walls break where the worktop breaks. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. 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. Full height wants a flat wall behind it. The old tiling must be off and the wall made good and dry before templating, not on fitting day. The decision usually gets made standing in the room rather than at a desk, which is why a slab is worth viewing whole instead of choosing from a sample card. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Deferred is workable; undecided is not.

Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. 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. Each obstruction is another joint, and it is priced as one.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. Three stools along one side need more clear length than most plans allow, and once the seating depth is fixed the piece either grows or it loses a seat. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. Upstands follow the return round the corner.

Carcasses stay. Surface changes. That is the whole of it. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. Block paving bedded on sand can rut under a fully loaded van, and that is said to the customer beforehand rather than explained afterwards. Full-height panels are the awkward thing to move, light enough to lift and long enough to flex on the way. Off the van last, and never in a hurry.

A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. The window over the sink sits at about worktop height, so the run is set out around the sill and the reveal rather than under them. Splashbacks come off the same slab run as the tops, which means the decision has to be made before fabrication starts. The extractor position is measured before the panel is drawn.