Splashbacks and upstands in Kew

Yes. Kew is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TW9. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Richmond upon Thames. Camera enforcement gives nobody the chance to explain, where an officer on foot at least sees a tail lift down and stone coming off it. 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. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A soil stack is strapped to the outside of the addition wall and its branch comes through low, which settles where the sink can go before any layout is drawn. 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. Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. 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. Mitred returns come from one place in the slab.

Even an easy kerbside carry wants the pavement clear at the tail lift, because a three-metre piece on edge has a swing radius nobody expects until it is swinging. 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. Where a loading concession applies at all, it holds only while something is being carried, which makes it a way to unload rather than a way to park. 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 really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It gets quoted, cut and fitted exactly as it would anywhere else on 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. Cut now, stored for the next void. 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. Same batch, or the join will say so.

It is walked round rather than looked at from one side, so the direction the veining runs along it cannot be hidden against a wall the way it can on a perimeter run. 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. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. 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. The pier takes a joint against it, not across it. 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. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. 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.

There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. Some of them overhang on two sides at once, and each side is worked out separately, because the load on an edge people lean against is not the load on an edge people walk past. 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.

Say what you have and where it came from before anything is booked, because thickness and batch decide what can be done with it. How much slab you hold matters: upstands and any remake have to come out of the same batch. Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. Upstands are the cheapest way to finish several kitchens consistently, and they come out of the offcuts the tops leave behind. Ordered together, or the match is luck.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. The fit follows 5 to 10 working days after the template, and nothing is cut before that visit because nothing is cut from a plan. No payment is due before the template. Injected damp courses and re-rendered lower walls leave the bottom metre standing proud of everything above it. Splashbacks come off the same slab run as the tops, which means the decision has to be made before fabrication starts. Making the wall good first is cheaper than working around it.

The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. The original scullery gully is still live in the yard outside the back door, and new waste from the sink joins a drain laid for a copper and a stone sink. 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. Old plaster rarely gives you a flat metre.