Splashbacks and upstands in Lots Road

Yes. Lots Road is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW10. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Kensington and Chelsea. 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. Handling is where these pieces get damaged. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Many of these kitchens are a fitted pod dropped into open floor, so three sides are free and only the fourth is ever scribed. Exposed brick is the defining issue: the face is uneven by 10mm or more across a bay, so a stone splashback either scribes to it, which means the back of the panel has to be relieved, or it is deliberately set proud on a subframe with a shadow reveal all round. The wall gets made good first or the gap shows. A cill projecting forward of the plaster line pushes the back edge out, and the units then stand off the wall by that amount for the whole length. 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 lift is only part of the route, and the corridor from the lobby to the flat door often holds a tighter turn than the car does. 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. Nothing is leaned anywhere it could slide down. 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. One trip is always better than three.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication and worktop installation. 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 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. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Ordered together, or the match is luck. 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. 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.

On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. 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. Panels come off the same slab area as the run. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Where the sill lands inside the height an upstand would occupy there is no upstand, and the stone either dies into the reveal or stops short of it. 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. Decide and build the backing method, scribe, subframe or board, before the template, because the templater is measuring to that face and not to the brick. A landlord with several similar flats usually wants one specification repeated, so the material, the edge detail and the upstand height are recorded and reused rather than rechosen each time. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Deferred is workable; undecided is not.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Exposed brick and steel is the whole job here, because neither of them presents a flat plane to scribe to. Splashbacks come off the same slab run as the tops, which means the decision has to be made before fabrication starts. Old walls take a scribed upstand better than a rigid panel.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Open plan means long uninterrupted runs and an island in the middle of the room with every edge on show. Socket positions, sill heights and wall flatness are the three things that settle this, and all three are properties of the building. Twenty millimetres of packing behind a panel is not a fix.

Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. A rated load sounds ample until three lengths of granite and two fitters are standing on it, so the stone goes up one piece at a time. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. The break goes where a joint reads as deliberate.

Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Window reveals take a piece of their own.