Splashbacks and upstands in Keston

Yes. Keston is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are BR2. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bromley. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. The crate exists for the walk from the van. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A range or an Aga in an original recess is usually immovable, so the run is designed around it and the clearances come from the appliance. These runs are long and often include a range recess, so the splashback is nearly always more than one piece and the joint placement matters, put it in a corner or over a hob centre line, not randomly in the middle of a clear run. Cut from the same slab run as the tops. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. 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 short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. 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. The frame they travel in needs the clearance as well. A shared drive is only useful if the neighbour is not the one parked behind the van, so we ask which side the standing belongs to before the date is set. 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.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication and worktop installation. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Cut now, stored for the next void. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Same batch, or the join will say so.

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. 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. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. 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 range and extractor must be sited and the window cill finished before the template, as both fix the vertical limits of the splashback. Where two people share the decision it helps to know early which of them is settling the edge profile and which is settling the budget, because it is rarely the same person for both. 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.

Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. Supply through us runs £110 to £550 per square metre for the slab alone, which is the line you would be removing. 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. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. Ordered together, or the match is luck.

If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. Nothing is payable in advance of the template. Long perimeter runs and an island mean level has to hold across the whole room rather than along any one wall. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Twenty millimetres of packing behind a panel is not a fix.

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. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. 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. Upstands sit tight because both edges are cut.

Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. Ceiling beams cross the room at a height that decides where a piece can be stood on edge and where it cannot. Behind a range cooker with gas burners, granite or sintered stone is the sensible pick; quartz has a resin binder and does not enjoy sustained radiant heat at close range, so keep it out of the immediate hob zone or specify a different material for that panel. Decided before fabrication starts.