Splashbacks and upstands in Hornsey

Yes. Hornsey is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N8. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Haringey. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. They go in with the first load where the stop is short. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

Ceilings in the principal rooms are three metres or more, so a full-height panel behind a hob is a taller piece here than the same kitchen would need anywhere else. 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. Dry lining behind a panel needs a fixing plan of its own. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. 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. Height follows the sill, not the plan.

Whether the stone can stand on end in the car is the first question, because a lift that takes 2.1m upright takes nothing like that lying flat. 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. They come in last so nothing is carried past them. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Rushing the last piece off the van is how panels break.

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 kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. One conversion drawing repeats its mistakes six times. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Cut now, stored for the next void.

A waterfall leg is a separate piece bonded to the top on a mitre, so the floor it stands on has to be level enough for that mitre to close along its full height. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Upstands follow the return round the corner. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. 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. Scribed along the top edge as well. 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. Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. The wall trade answers to a different budget.

Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. Goods lifts and passenger lifts fail differently: one has a rated load that matters, the other has a door aperture that matters more. 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. Suction lifters take a panel where hands cannot get a grip.

Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. Taking the old tops off and disposing of them is its own line on the quote rather than something folded into the stone price. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. Full-height panels are the awkward thing to move, light enough to lift and long enough to flex on the way. Two hands and a clear route, or it waits on the van.

Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. The obstruction breaks the length, every time.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. It is the heaviest single piece in the kitchen, so the number of hands needed on the day and the route in are worked out from that piece rather than from the runs. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. The hob panel is sized after the extractor, not before.