Splashbacks and upstands in Lewisham

Yes. Lewisham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE13. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of the borough. 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. 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. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The step down from the main house into the addition is commonly a hundred to a hundred and fifty millimetres, which gives the kitchen a different floor datum from the rest of the ground floor. 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. Old plaster rarely gives you a flat metre. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the 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. A downstand sets the panel height, not the wall units.

The lift has to be booked and blanketed before anything moves, and that booking needs to cover the old tops coming out as well as the new stone going in. 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. Nothing is leaned anywhere it could slide down. 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. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. The longer the walk, the fewer the panels per trip.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and 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. 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. 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. 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. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Ordered together, or the match is luck.

A peninsula projects into circulation space, so its outer corners usually take a radius rather than a point, and that radius is agreed at template rather than assumed. 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. Return ends are polished, not left sawn. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. 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. 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. Where the provider has set the specification the material choice was made once for a great many kitchens, and the useful work is meeting it exactly rather than proposing something else on the day. 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.

Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. Full-height panels are the awkward thing to move, light enough to lift and long enough to flex on the way. A narrow gap between parked cars decides how a panel turns.

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. Where the addition is single storey the ceiling follows a lean-to roof, so one side of the room loses height and a full-height panel has a sloping stop. 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. The wall gets made good first or the gap shows.

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 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 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.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. Peninsula tops are often the longest single piece in the kitchen, so if anything in the layout is going to force a second slab it is generally this one. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Panel widths answer to the slab before the wall.