Splashbacks and upstands in Morden

Yes. Morden is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SM4. 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. The longer the walk, the fewer the panels per trip. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The first kitchen units were metal and screwed straight into the blockwork, and their plugs are still in the wall behind whatever plaster went over them. The rear kitchen wall in ex-council flats and maisonettes is commonly dense in-situ concrete or blockwork with a thin skim, which means mechanical fixings are hard work and the splashback is held on adhesive rather than screwed. The wall gets made good first or the gap shows. 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. Make the wall good first, or accept the detail.

Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. 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. A polished face close to an edge does not survive a knock. 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. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. A narrow gap between parked cars decides how a panel turns.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and 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. 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. A spare panel is cheaper now than next year. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. Reordered next year, it will not match.

One leg of an L is nearly always the working run and the other little more than a landing space, but both are templated, cut and edged to the same standard. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Height is agreed before the cut list closes. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. 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. Scribed, dubbed out, or set proud. Pick one. Any surface trunking or conduit has to be rerouted or accepted and boxed before templating, because the stone cannot be scribed around a live conduit on site. 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. Full-height panels need the wall made good first, which is another trade and another timescale. Deferred is workable; undecided is not.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. Floors are a sand and cement screed over concrete, laid fast and worn since, so they are hard, solid and seldom flat. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Sockets cut in the shop, not on site.

Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. Joint placement is a decision, not an accident.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. Textured ceiling coatings and old floor tiles in this stock predate 2000, so nothing is scraped, sanded or lifted before anyone knows what it is. Socket positions, sill heights and wall flatness are the three things that settle this, and all three are properties of the building. Height off the units, not off the old tiles.

What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. The chimney breast in the kitchen served a back boiler behind the living room fire, so the flue is a shared one and the breast is deeper than a fireplace would need. That suits a full-height piece, because a large flat panel bonded across its back is more stable on concrete than a run of small tiles ever was. Solid plaster on brick takes a panel; a hollow wall wants thought.