Splashbacks and upstands in Leyton

Yes. Leyton is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E10. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Waltham Forest. A market day closes the street to traffic for the morning and hands it back in the afternoon, which moves the visit rather than cancelling it. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Wind on an open street matters more than the walk does. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The lean-to roof drains into a valley gutter against the addition next door, and a long leak there shows at the head of the kitchen wall rather than on the ceiling. 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. 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. 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. Behind the boxing it becomes two pieces.

Two people will walk a two-metre piece in through a front door; the same hall with a three-metre piece wants four, purely because nobody can let go halfway. 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. Two people to a panel, however light it looks on the van. A timed school street shuts the road either side of the school day, so the van goes in between those two windows or it does not go in. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Standing a panel on the pavement is the last resort.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop replacement. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. 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. 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. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Ordered together, or the match is luck.

Sockets set into the end panel keep the top clear, but they sit below the stone and are cut into the panel by the fitter rather than machined into the worktop. 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. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

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. 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. Nothing gets hidden behind a full-height panel. 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. 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. Committed early or dropped early, not left open.

The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. No money changes hands before the template. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. The back addition is frequently a single skin of brick rendered on both faces, which takes a fixing badly and moves with the weather. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Same slab run, same day, same batch.

The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. A picture rail, a deep skirting and a moulded architrave all sit in the way of anything that assumes flat wall from floor to ceiling. Splashbacks come off the same slab run as the tops, which means the decision has to be made before fabrication starts. The wall decides, not the brochure.

A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. The front door is often the cheapest hundred millimetres on the route, because a door lifted off its hinges gives back the width its own thickness was taking. It is usually the full-height panels rather than the tops that will not make the turn, and that only shows up when they arrive. The ceiling over a staircase limits a standing panel as much as the walls.

Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. An inward-opening door swinging back against the wall leaves less clear opening than the frame measures, and a storm porch in front of it is tighter again. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. A polished face close to an edge does not survive a knock.