Splashbacks and upstands in Malden Rushett

Yes. Malden Rushett is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are KT9. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Kingston upon Thames. Where the drive is shared, the half-hour the van spends in the way is agreed with the neighbour in advance rather than apologised for at the time. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. A tall panel and a timed bay is the worst combination here. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

These were built late enough to have a damp course and proper footings, so the front of the house is close to true and the rear addition holding the kitchen is the part that has dropped. 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. The tile bed comes off before anything is measured. Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. 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 window board below worktop height ends the upstand argument.

Garden routes carry their own hazards: a drain cover, a step up to a patio, wet decking, or a lawn that will not take a loaded trolley. 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. It travels on edge, so the clearance is checked on edge. A step up from the drive to the threshold turns the last two metres into a lift, and a lift is where two pairs of hands become the minimum. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. They go in with the first load where the stop is short.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It gets quoted, cut and fitted exactly as it would anywhere else on the patch. 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. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Ordered together, or the match is luck. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Sockets final before template.

A corbel on show under an overhang is a decision about how the piece looks from a stool, so it gets settled alongside the edge profile rather than left to whoever fits it. 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. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. 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. Full height wants a flat wall behind it. 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. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. The tops and the wall are rarely one approval.

What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. Each obstruction is another joint, and it is priced as one.

Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. The kitchen occupies the ground floor of the addition with a garden door at the far end, so there is a second way in that is narrower than the front door and a great deal shorter. 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. Panels expose a wall; upstands forgive one.

Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. A downdraught extractor takes a long slot out of the middle of the piece and a motor housing out of the cabinet below it, so what sits under the top is settled before anything is cut. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. Window reveals take a piece of their own.

The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. 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. There is usually a step down into the back addition, so the kitchen floor and the hall floor are not the same level and neither of them is flat. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. The wall decides, not the brochure.