Splashbacks and upstands in Munster Village

Yes. Munster Village is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW6. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hammersmith and Fulham. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. One trip is always better than three. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A two-up two-down has a kitchen that was never designed to be one, so the run is short, the ceiling is low and every millimetre of depth gets argued over. 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 makes that decision, not the brochure. Two flats in one house means two small jobs and two sets of stairs - price them as separate installs, not one address.

Flat-fronted terraces open straight onto the pavement with no front garden, so you unload directly at the door but you are standing in the footway while you do it - a short window and a spotter is the way. Upper flats are reached by a stair immediately behind the street door with a turn at the top, which is a hard limit around 2.4-2.6m for a piece carried on edge. Weight tells on a staircase more than anywhere else, because there is nowhere to set a piece down mid-flight and no way to change your grip once it is moving. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. It decides panel size before anything is cut.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Same batch, same run, same day. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Siliconed to the worktop, never grouted.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Joint placement is a decision, not an accident. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. 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. 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. The wall has to be ready.