Splashbacks and upstands in Joydens Wood

Yes. Joydens Wood is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are DA5. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bexley. Where the van cannot turn on the plot it has to arrive already facing the right way, so the approach along the street is part of the plan. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Off the van last, and never in a hurry. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

The kitchen sits at the back with a door to the garden and a window over the sink, and both are on the wall the run wants. 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. Blown plaster comes off before stone goes on. An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. 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. Each obstruction is another joint, and it is priced as one.

A loading bay or a red route puts a clock on the unload, so the pieces come off in the order they will be fitted rather than the order they were loaded. 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. Panels are carried on edge from the tail lift to the wall. A drive behind an electric gate depends on somebody being in to open it and on the gate staying open while the load comes off. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. The crate exists for the walk from the van.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation. 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. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. 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. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Cut now, stored for the next void.

Waterfall ends are cut in sequence off the length either side of the top so the vein carries down the leg, and that sequence is gone the moment a piece has to be recut. 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. The hob panel is sized after the extractor, not before. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. 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 panel takes its height off the steel. 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. Full-height panels need the wall made good first, which is another trade and another timescale. Plastering finishes on somebody else’s timescale.

A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. 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. 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. The frame they travel in needs the clearance as well.

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. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. Everything on an island is fed from underneath, extraction, a socket run, a hob and sometimes a waste, and each of them wants its hole before the top is bonded down. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. A joint behind a tap is a joint on show.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. The floor is a solid slab with a screed over it, which is stable underfoot and rarely flat across a long run. 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 wall build-up sets the depth of the return.

Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. These were built with generous circulation, so an island or a peninsula fits in a room that would be too tight in a house of the same floor area. Behind a hob the panel runs to the underside of the extractor, and that height is settled on site rather than on the plan. The age of the plaster decides the fixing, not the finish.