Splashbacks and upstands in Heston

Yes. Heston is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TW5. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hounslow. Overhanging branches clear the roof of a car and catch the roof of a van, so the drive is looked at from the driver seat rather than from the doorstep. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Long panels and long carries do not mix. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A side door into a lobby with a cloakroom off it is the standard arrangement, so there is a second way in that misses the hall altogether. These kitchens are nearly always retiled at least twice, and stripping the old tiles takes the bottom course of plaster with it because the original laminate top ran underneath the tiles rather than up to them. A hundred millimetres covers more than it looks. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. 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. A window board below worktop height ends the upstand argument.

The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. 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 tall panel cannot be tilted to clear a turn, so it is sized not to need to. On a drive that only takes one vehicle nose-in, the van has to reverse the whole length of it to get back out, which decides which way it goes in. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Off the van last, and never in a hurry.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop fabrication. 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. A second kitchen or a kitchenette in an annexe is a small job with the same fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines as a large one. 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. Where an annexe has been built or converted, its floor and its walls are newer than the main house and behave differently under the same run. 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.

Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. 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. Upstands follow the return round the corner. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. 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. 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. A quartz sample left on the counter for a week under the actual kitchen lights settles more arguments than any showroom, and an owner is the only person in a position to do that. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. One visit for upstands, two for full-height panels.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. Rear extensions on these sit on shallow foundations, and the crack at the junction with the original wall tells you which way it has moved. Splashbacks come off the same slab run as the tops, which means the decision has to be made before fabrication starts. Behind the hob is where full height earns its cost.

There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. An island carries its own edge detail all the way round, so a mitred 100mm apron on four sides is four mitres cut, bonded and polished before the piece ever leaves the bench. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. The hob panel is sized after the extractor, not before.

Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. The incoming main and the stopcock come up through the floor at the old scullery wall, so whatever unit stands over them has to stay removable. 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. The plaster behind it is the real question.

On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. 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. Socket positions, sill heights and wall flatness are the three things that settle this, and all three are properties of the building. Panel joints land over a unit line, never mid-span.