Splashbacks and upstands in North Wembley

Yes. North Wembley is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are HA0, HA9. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Brent. A visitor or a neighbour parked on the drive is a five-minute problem at eight in the morning and an hour-long one at eleven. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Rushing the last piece off the van is how panels break. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The kitchen sits on the far side of the hall from the front door, so even with easy access outside there is still a turn to make inside. These kitchens are nearly always retiled at least twice, and stripping the old tiles takes the bottom course of plaster with it because the original laminate top ran underneath the tiles rather than up to them. Old plaster rarely gives you a flat metre. A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. 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. The sill caps the upstand before anything else does.

A side gate and a back door mean the stone never goes through the house at all, which keeps the dust and most of the risk outside. 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. Where the front garden has been paved over completely the van stands close to the house, and the route in is still a standard front door. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. Two hands and a clear route, or it waits on the van.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation. 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. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. 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. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. The offcuts finish the room.

A tall bank of housings at one end takes a chunk out of the working run, so the usable length of that side is always less than the length of the wall behind it. 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. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. 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. A downstand sets the panel height, not the wall units. The old tiling must be off and the wall made good and dry before templating, not on fitting day. Because the money comes out of a household rather than a maintenance budget, phasing is common: tops now, island or splashbacks later, quoted so the second visit still matches the first. Full-height panels need the wall made good first, which is another trade and another timescale. 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 is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. The consumer unit and the meter often sit high on the wall at one end of the kitchen, and neither of them is going to move to suit a run of stone. 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.

Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. Full-height panels are the awkward thing to move, light enough to lift and long enough to flex on the way. The longer the walk, the fewer the panels per trip.

The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. The side passage is the measurement that matters, because a piece has to be carried flat down it and then turned in at the back door, and the turn is always tighter than the passage. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. A tall panel cannot be tilted to clear a turn, so it is sized not to need to.

Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. These were built with a separate dining room, and most have had the wall between it and the kitchen taken out with a steel put in above. 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 gets made good first or the gap shows.