Splashbacks and upstands in Maida Hill

Yes. Maida Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W9. It is worked on our central London run, along with the rest of Westminster. Enforcement zones rarely accept a trade van unloading stone as an exemption, so this gets sorted before the date is confirmed rather than argued about afterwards. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. One trip is always better than three. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Edwardian terraces are wider and taller than the Victorian houses next to them, so the kitchen usually takes a full-width rear room rather than a narrow outrigger. 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 makes that decision, not the brochure. Social and rental stock here gets old base units that are already water-damaged at the sink - allow for replacing the sink base carcass rather than dropping stone onto swollen chipboard.

Estate blocks with fob entry, deck access and a single lift that is frequently in use by residents, plus restricted bays and enforcement on the estate roads. The Westway runs overhead nearby, so some approaches are one-way loops that add ten minutes. Piece length is set by the internal diagonal of the lift car, not by the length of the slab. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. Joint positions follow from that.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. 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, same run, same day. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Siliconed to the worktop, never grouted.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Joint placement is a decision, not an accident. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over 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. An upstand rides what a panel exposes. 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 ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. Splashbacks are cut from the same slab run as the tops, so they have to be decided before fabrication, not after. Decided before fabrication, not after.