Splashbacks and upstands in Mottingham

Yes. Mottingham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE9. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bromley. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. A narrow gap between parked cars decides how a panel turns. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

An ex-council house is solidly built to a standard plan, with the kitchen at the rear and a back door next to it. 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. A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. 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.

A narrow entrance hall with a turn into the back of the house caps the longest piece we can physically get in, whatever the run itself measures. 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. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. These travel flat and get carried on edge, and both want room.

Often enough. It is one of the three, behind worktop replacement. The template, the workshop and the installers are the same either way. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. A spare panel is cheaper now than next year. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Reordered next year, it will not match.

A dishwasher door on one side and an oven door on the other cannot both stand open in a narrow aisle, so which appliance goes where matters more in this shape than in any other. 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. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. 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. 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. Flats bought out of managed stock keep the original kitchen dimensions long after the ownership changed, so the layout says very little about who is paying for the work. 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.

An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. Rear access through a garden or a shared path means long pieces can usually come in whole from the back. 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.

Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. The kitchen doorway is usually offset into a corner, so one leg of an L is short before anyone has designed anything. 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.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. 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 decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. The sill caps the upstand before anything else does.

The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. A piece is never laid flat across a gap while it is moved, because that is how stone cracks unaided. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. Panel size is checked against the tightest point rather than the average one.