Splashbacks and upstands in Hither Green

Yes. Hither Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE13, SE12. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. Where a loading concession applies at all, it holds only while something is being carried, which makes it a way to unload rather than a way to park. 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 rear extension is frequently original rather than added, which means it is solidly built and just as far out of square as the rest of the house. 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. Nothing goes on a wall that will not hold it. 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 is usually what pushes a job towards a 100mm upstand instead of a full-height panel, because an upstand rides what a panel exposes. Scribe the top edge too or it stands off.

Where the garden is level and the back door is wide the pieces get staged outside on trestles and brought in one at a time as the fitters are ready for them. 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. Loading concessions differ from one zone to the next rather than following a single national rule, so what applied on the last job proves nothing about this one. 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.

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. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Wipe-down beats sealed grout on a turnaround. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Plot spec panels are ordered by the plot, not the room.

A downdraught extractor takes a long slot out of the middle of the piece and a motor housing out of the cabinet below it, so what sits under the top is settled before anything is cut. 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. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

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 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 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. Flats bought out of managed stock keep the original kitchen dimensions long after the ownership changed, so the layout says very little about who is paying for the work. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Heights that have to match are cut to match.

A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Grass and gravel will not take a loaded trolley, so a boarded track gets laid from the gate to the door before the first piece moves. 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. That is agreed at template, not on fitting day.

They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. Original quarry tile is often still down under two or three later floor coverings, which is why the finished floor height is rarely what anyone expects. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Boxed pipework decides the panel width before taste does.

Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. The workmanship guarantee is the same either way. It does not extend to a material we did not supply. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. One conversion drawing repeats its mistakes six times.

Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. Wider halls make the carry noticeably easier, and that alone can remove a join that a narrower terrace would have forced into the run. 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. The age of the plaster decides the fixing, not the finish.