Splashbacks and upstands in Mapesbury

Yes. Mapesbury is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW2, NW6. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Brent. A drive behind an electric gate depends on somebody being in to open it and on the gate staying open while the load comes off. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. A tall panel and a timed bay is the worst combination here. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

Original joinery is deep and stands proud of the plaster, so the run is plotted to the units rather than to the wall behind them. These runs are long and often include a range recess, so the splashback is nearly always more than one piece and the joint placement matters, put it in a corner or over a hob centre line, not randomly in the middle of a clear run. What the plaster is stuck to matters more than its colour. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. 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. The obstruction breaks the length, every time.

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. 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. The ceiling over a staircase limits a standing panel as much as the walls. Some drives are wide enough for the van and too short for the tail lift, because the tail lift needs its own clear metre behind the vehicle. 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 particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication and worktop installation. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. 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. 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. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Sockets final before template.

A hob cut-out and the floor penetration feeding it have to land over the same cabinet, and where they do not it is the stone that gets redrawn rather than the pipework. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Panels come off the same slab area as the run. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. 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. A tall panel exposes what an upstand forgives. The range and extractor must be sited and the window cill finished before the template, as both fix the vertical limits of the splashback. The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. What repeats across flats is recorded once and repeated.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. 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. Scribe the top edge too or it stands off.

The quote is itemised, so a job where you already hold the slab is the same job with the material line taken off it. Order is what matters: a slab is templated before it is cut, so an uncut slab is straightforward and one already machined for another kitchen is not. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. Upstands are the cheapest way to finish several kitchens consistently, and they come out of the offcuts the tops leave behind. Cut with the tops while the batch is open.

Taking the old tops off and disposing of them is its own line on the quote rather than something folded into the stone price. What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. The carcasses stay put. Only the surface changes. Where the drive falls away from the house the trolley wants to run, and where it climbs the same load has to be pushed the whole way up. Full-height panels are the awkward thing to move, light enough to lift and long enough to flex on the way. Rushing the last piece off the van is how panels break.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. 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. 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.