Splashbacks and upstands in Liverpool Street

Yes. Liverpool Street is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC2M. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. The longer the walk, the fewer the panels per trip. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

The kitchen was a service room at the back of the flat, so it is a long way from the front door along a corridor with two turns in it. Mansion block kitchens are full of boxed-in soil stacks, gas risers and heating pipework, and the boxing is usually plywood or plasterboard that stops short of the ceiling, so the splashback run gets broken up by returns rather than running clean wall to wall. Old walls lean back, and a tall panel shows it. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. 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 breast return is scribed on three edges.

Timber nosings chip under a slipped edge, so the treads are covered along the whole flight rather than only at the landings. 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. Two people to a panel, however light it looks on the van. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. A narrow gap between parked cars decides how a panel turns.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. That says something about the housing round here, not about the work. Quote, cut and fit are the same here as on any other part of the patch. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Ordered together, or the match is luck. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. Sockets final before template.

A run that stops in mid-air at the open end needs a finished end rather than a cut one, and that end takes the same edge work as the whole front. 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 seam sits in shadow or it sits in a corner. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. 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. Set it proud on a subframe and the gap becomes deliberate. The riser boxing must be finished in its final form and any access panel positions agreed before the template, since the stone is set out around them. Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. 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.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. Walls are solid brick with lime plaster and a hard skim over the top, and that skim comes away in sheets when old tiles are taken back. Each return needs its own piece with a mitred or butted external corner, and those pieces should come off the same slab so the movement lines up across the corner. Sockets in a stud wall move more easily than sockets in brick.

The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Freeholder consent, a works agreement and proof of insurance are often wanted before a van is allowed to unload. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. An upstand asks less of old plaster than a panel does.

Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Sash windows sit in deep reveals with a working box behind the lining, so a run dying into one has to clear more than the plaster. A panel stops short of anything that has to stay accessible, and the cut edge is polished rather than hidden behind a bead. What the plaster is stuck to matters more than its colour.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Where a run finishes hard against a wall the last few millimetres are scribed, and where it finishes in open floor it is cut square and polished, which is two different jobs on one length. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. A galley shows both walls at the same time.