Splashbacks and upstands in North Ealing

Yes. North Ealing is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W5. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Ealing. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. 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.

Handmade brick and lime plaster move visibly along a run, and a straight-cut back edge shows it immediately. These runs are long and often include a range recess, so the splashback is nearly always more than one piece and the joint placement matters, put it in a corner or over a hob centre line, not randomly in the middle of a clear run. The wall makes that decision, not the brochure. Waterfall ends are cut and dry-assembled in the workshop, because a mitred external corner is not something you fix on site in someone's kitchen.

Wide roads with garages and drives on most properties, so parking is rarely a problem. The Hanger Lane gyratory is the only real obstacle on the way in. A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. That is agreed at template, not on fitting day.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication, worktop installation and worktop design & quotation. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. Households sharing a house tend to want two prep areas rather than one, which usually means an island as well as a perimeter run. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Sockets final before template. Where an annexe has been built or converted, its floor and its walls are newer than the main house and behave differently under the same run. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Siliconed to the worktop, never grouted.

If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. 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. Corners get their own pieces. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. 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 range and extractor must be sited and the window cill finished before the template, as both fix the vertical limits of the splashback. Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Decided before fabrication, not after.