Splashbacks and upstands in North Harrow

Yes. North Harrow is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are HA2. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Harrow. Where the drive is shared, the half-hour the van spends in the way is agreed with the neighbour in advance rather than apologised for at the time. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Rushing the last piece off the van is how panels break. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The scullery floor was quarry tile bedded on concrete and it is often still under a laminate, sitting lower than the boards in the room it now joins. That leaves a ragged band right where the upstand has to sit, which is fine for a 100mm upstand that covers it, but a full-height splashback needs the wall made good first or it will rock on the high spots. The wall makes that decision, not the brochure. Casement handles and stays swing down into the space above the worktop, so the clearance that counts is the one measured with the window open. 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. A window board below worktop height ends the upstand argument.

Grass and gravel will not take a loaded trolley, so a boarded track gets laid from the gate to the door before the first piece moves. 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. Break positions are chosen for the carry. A step up from the drive to the threshold turns the last two metres into a lift, and a lift is where two pairs of hands become the minimum. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Two hands and a clear route, or it waits on the van.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop replacement. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Cut as a set, so one can replace another. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. The offcuts finish the room.

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. Panel widths answer to the slab before the wall. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. 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. Full height wants a flat wall behind it. The old tiling must be off and the wall made good and dry before templating, not on fitting day. Someone who expects to still be there in ten years asks different questions: how a honed finish marks, what a sealer does and does not do, and whether a chip by the sink can be repaired in place. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Nothing goes behind the hob until the wall is signed off.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The extension slab was poured to its own level, so there is a lip or a ramp where the new floor meets the original one. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Old walls take a scribed upstand better than a rigid panel.

Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. The classic arrangement is the original back room with a later extension bolted onto it, so the kitchen is two ages of building in one room. The ragged band left when old tiles and laminate come off together is what usually decides upstand over full height. Cut from the same slab run as the tops.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. A step up to a patio or a raised threshold at the back door means the piece is lifted rather than rolled, and that is where the crew size gets decided. 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. A tall panel cannot be tilted to clear a turn, so it is sized not to need to.

Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. 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. Each obstruction is another joint, and it is priced as one.