Splashbacks and upstands in King's Cross

Yes. King's Cross is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N1C, N1, NW1. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Rushing the last piece off the van is how panels break. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Infill plots usually put the kitchen at the back with wide doors to a small garden, and that opening is the best route in. The plasterboard is genuinely flat here, so a full-height splashback sits well and a slim upstand looks almost redundant, but the sockets are the problem, because they are set out to the developer's original kitchen and often land at odd heights or right on a joint line. The age of the plaster decides the fixing, not the finish. 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 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.

Lift doors close on a timer that takes no account of somebody holding a worktop, so a pair of hands stays on the buttons at each end. 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. Suction lifters take a panel where hands cannot get a grip. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Two hands and a clear route, or it waits on the van.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop fabrication. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. Upgrading a builder-finish kitchen is mostly a swap, so the cost sits in the material choice rather than in the shape of the room. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Plot spec panels are ordered by the plot, not the room. Handover-spec kitchens are square, plumb and predictable, which means the join count is honest and driven by run length rather than by the building. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. One conversion drawing repeats its mistakes six times.

Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. 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. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. 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. Any socket you intend to move must be moved and re-plastered before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece of stone. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Fitted with the tops if it was decided with them.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Nothing changes hands until after the template. Developer carcasses are thin cam-lock chipboard, which is entirely adequate under laminate and wants bracing before stone. Splashbacks come off the same slab run as the tops, which means the decision has to be made before fabrication starts. The tile line that was there proves nothing about level.

The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Everything arrives through one controlled entrance with a booking sheet, and a delivery that misses its slot waits. Socket positions, sill heights and wall flatness are the three things that settle this, and all three are properties of the building. Old walls take a scribed upstand better than a rigid panel.

Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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. Nothing gets hidden behind a full-height panel.

Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. A car will often hold more than its doors will admit, and it is the clear width between the door edges that a piece actually has to pass through. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. Nothing is leaned anywhere it could slide down.