Splashbacks and upstands in Highbury

Yes. Highbury is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N5. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Islington. Where the permit is a digital session rather than a paper one, somebody in the house has to start it at the hour the van actually arrives. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Wind on an open street matters more than the walk does. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The lean-to roof drains into a valley gutter against the addition next door, and a long leak there shows at the head of the kitchen wall rather than on the ceiling. 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. The plaster behind it is the real question. 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. 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. Scribe the top edge too or it stands off.

Counting hands matters more than counting metres on a staircase, because a piece two people lift off a van still wants three on the flight and a fourth watching the trailing corner. 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. Full height goes in only where the way in allows full height. A resident bay and a shared-use bay can sit on the same street under different rules, and it is usually the shared one a visitor permit or a ticket touches. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Standing a panel on the pavement is the last resort.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. One conversion drawing repeats its mistakes six times. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. Cut now, stored for the next void.

Where the return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. 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 peninsula end takes a panel on both faces. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. 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. The sill caps the upstand before anything else does. 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. 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. Full-height panels need the wall made good first, which is another trade and another timescale. Heights that have to match are cut to match.

Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. The bathroom upstairs sits directly over the kitchen, so its waste comes down in a boxed corner from floor to ceiling that no worktop is going to move. Where a client wants a full-height piece behind the hob, it usually sits in the old chimney recess, and that recess is rarely square top to bottom or side to side, so it has to be templated as a trapezium rather than a rectangle. A bowed wall is what decides between an upstand and a panel.

The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. 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. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. A downstand sets the panel height, not the wall units.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. 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. 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. A mitred external return around it has to come from the same position in the slab, or the pattern visibly steps at the corner. Behind the boxing it becomes two pieces.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. A mitred corner is cut and dressed as a matched pair, and if either leg shifts by a millimetre on site the joint opens along its whole length rather than at one end. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Scribe to the wall rather than stretch the panel.