Splashbacks and upstands in Ilford

Yes. Ilford is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are IG1. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Redbridge. A dedicated loading bay or service yard is the easiest arrangement in a managed building, provided the slot is booked and someone has the key to the shutter. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. A tall panel and a timed bay is the worst combination here. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The original larder or store cupboard usually survives in a corner, and that alcove is deeper than the units and squarer than the walls around it. 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 wall makes that decision, not the brochure. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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. The sill caps the upstand before anything else does.

A car ceiling at 2.2m sets the tallest thing that will stand in it, and the trap panel and light fitting take a slice off even that. 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. They come in last so nothing is carried past them. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. They go in with the first load where the stop is short.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop replacement. That says something about the housing round here, not about the work. Quote, cut and fit are the same here as on any other part of the patch. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Cut now, stored for the next void.

A run that stops in mid-air at the open end needs a finished end rather than a cut one, and that end takes the same edge work as the whole front. 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. Window reveals take a piece of their own. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. 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 downstand sets the panel height, not the wall units. 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. The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Plastering finishes on somebody else’s timescale.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. 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. Behind the boxing it becomes two pieces.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Rear rooms of this date have a wide sash or a pair of garden doors, so a good deal of the wall the run wants is glass. A full-height panel in a chimney recess is templated as a trapezium, since that recess is square in neither direction. Cut from the same slab run as the tops.

Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. Nothing gets hidden behind a full-height panel.

A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. A goods lift booked by the hour puts a clock on the whole delivery, so pieces go up in a planned order and nothing is handled twice. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. Suction lifters take a panel where hands cannot get a grip.