Splashbacks and upstands in Lee

Yes. Lee is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE12. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. Estate roads inside a controlled zone are sometimes managed privately rather than by the council, which changes who has to be asked. 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. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

The only window is in the side wall facing into the side return, so the room reads darker than its size and the worktop is doing much of the reflecting. 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. A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. 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.

Rear access usually lets us fit longer pieces whole, so the join count ends up decided by the slab rather than by the building. 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 panel is sized to the turn, not to the wall alone. A controlled parking zone means either a visitor permit sorted in advance or a suspended bay, and a suspension is applied for days ahead rather than on the morning. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. Handling is where these pieces get damaged.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. 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. Same batch, or the join will say so. 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. Ordered together, or the match is luck.

A downdraught extractor takes a long slot out of the middle of the piece and a motor housing out of the cabinet below it, so what sits under the top is settled before anything is cut. 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 joint behind a tap is a joint on show. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. 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 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. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. Full-height panels need the wall made good first, which is another trade and another timescale. Committed early or dropped early, not left open.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. 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. A window board below worktop height ends the upstand argument.

An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. There is a solid base under the old scullery end and suspended timber where the addition meets the house, and the two part company along that joint. 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.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. The original range recess often survives as a shallow alcove with an iron lintel over it, a hundred millimetres deeper than the wall either side of it. A 100mm upstand bedded on silicone is the honest answer where the plaster bows, because it rides what a tall panel exposes. The wall gets made good first or the gap shows.

A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Power and waste come up through the floor, and where they surface decides which cabinet can hold a sink and which one cannot. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Panels come off the same slab area as the run.