Splashbacks and upstands in New Cross Gate

Yes. New Cross Gate is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE14. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. A narrow gap between parked cars decides how a panel turns. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A service duct runs between the kitchen and the bathroom stacked above it, and access to that duct stays open whatever the layout does. 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. Height, returns and sockets, all settled on site. 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. Make the wall good first, or accept the detail.

Whether the stone can stand on end in the car is the first question, because a lift that takes 2.1m upright takes nothing like that lying flat. 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 panel that would need turning indoors is turned outside instead. 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. These travel flat and get carried on edge, and both want room.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop fabrication. 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. 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. 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. The person choosing the worktop is not the person using it, and that shifts the balance from appearance towards running cost. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Reordered next year, it will not match.

Handles on opposing runs meet in the middle of the aisle, so a deep edge profile specified on both sides takes width out of the standing space twice over. 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. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. 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. 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. Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. One visit for upstands, two for full-height panels.

If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. 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. Where the van has to move, the panels come in first.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Goods lifts and passenger lifts fail differently: one has a rated load that matters, the other has a door aperture that matters more. It is usually the full-height panels rather than the tops that will not make the turn, and that only shows up when they arrive. What can be got into the room decides the height above the worktop.

A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Older houses put the boiler or the meter on one of the two walls, and whatever is boxed in around it sets the point where that run has to stop. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Panel widths answer to the slab before the wall.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. The original units were screwed to timber grounds set into the wall, and where those were torn out the plaster was patched rather than replaced. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Height off the units, not off the old tiles.