Splashbacks and upstands in Kentish Town

Yes. Kentish Town is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW5. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. A suspension only works if the cones and the notice are actually there on the morning, and now and then a car is sitting in the bay regardless. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Standing a panel on the pavement is the last resort. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

The meters sit in the hall or under the stairs on the way through, so the carry passes a cupboard door that has to be shut and protected before anything moves. 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. A bowed wall is what decides between an upstand and a panel. 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. 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. A downstand sets the panel height, not the wall units.

A hall that widens further in is still only as good as its tightest point, and that point is usually within a metre of the front door. 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. Upstands make almost any turn a worktop will not. 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. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Handling is where these pieces get damaged.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. 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. One conversion drawing repeats its mistakes six times. 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. Cut now, stored for the next void.

The wall between the original room and the return usually carries a steel, and the plaster line above it steps, so anything full height behind the run is measured separately from the top. 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 galley shows both walls at the same time. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

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. 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. Behind the boxing it becomes two pieces. 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. Low maintenance is the honest choice for a let.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. A front path with a gate and a turn or two adds handling before the door is even reached, and every handling movement is another chance to catch a corner. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. Two people to a panel, however light it looks on the van.

Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. 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. Nothing gets hidden behind a full-height panel.

Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. The back addition is a narrow two-storey outrigger with a single external wall, and the kitchen galley runs the length of 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. Dry lining behind a panel needs a fixing plan of its own.

How the slab has been stored is worth telling us, because stone kept flat is not stone off a rack. Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. 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. Same batch, or the join will say so.