Splashbacks and upstands in Mitcham

Yes. Mitcham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are CR4. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Merton. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Two hands and a clear route, or it waits on the van. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Ceilings in the addition are lower than in the front rooms, so the band of wall between the worktop and the wall units is shorter than the rest of the house suggests. 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 wall gets made good first or the gap shows. 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. An upstand rides what a panel exposes.

A short run of external steps before the communal door means a piece is lifted twice before the staircase proper has even started. 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. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. The longer the walk, the fewer the panels per trip.

It is one of the three that come up most, though worktop replacement comes up more. Nothing changes between them: same template, same workshop, same installers. A managed portfolio tends to repeat one specification across every flat, which keeps later repairs and replacements simple to order. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Panels for every unit, cut in one go. Damage in a let flat is settled as a deposit deduction, so a surface that can be repaired in place is worth more than one that has to be replaced whole. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. A spare panel is cheaper now than next year.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. 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. Return ends are polished, not left sawn. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry 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. Make the wall good first, or accept the detail. 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. 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.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. The measurement that decides everything is the diagonal between the underside of the flight above and the outer edge of the turn below it. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. A polished face close to an edge does not survive a knock.

What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. 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. Scribed, dubbed out, or set proud. Pick one.

The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Lath and plaster, a settled floor and a hall with a turn in it are the three things that decide how this job runs. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Siliconed to the top, never grouted.

Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. 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. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. There is no leaning a piece against a wall halfway up, so any flight longer than a dozen treads is planned around a rest point on a landing. Panels travel on edge in a frame, and the frame needs the same clearance the finished piece does. Panel size is checked against the tightest point rather than the average one.