Splashbacks and upstands in Northolt

Yes. Northolt is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are UB5. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Ealing. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. These travel flat and get carried on edge, and both want room. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Front doors off the deck open into a lobby barely wider than the door itself, and the turn out of it is a right angle. That suits a full-height piece, because a large flat panel bonded across its back is more stable on concrete than a run of small tiles ever was. A hundred millimetres covers more than it looks. 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. 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. Scribed, dubbed out, or set proud. Pick one.

Booked delivery windows on a managed estate run to an hour, and a worktop install does not happen inside an hour. 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. That is agreed at template, not on fitting day. 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. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Where the van has to move, the panels come in first.

Yes, one of the three we see most, with worktop replacement ahead of it. Same visit to template, same workshop, same installers on the day. A managed portfolio tends to repeat one specification across every flat, which keeps later repairs and replacements simple to order. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Reordered next year, it will not match. 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. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Full height behind the hob is less for a tenant to scrub.

Corner sinks and corner hobs sit exactly where the joint wants to be, so on an L the cut-out positions get settled before the join positions do. 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. Joint placement is a decision, not an accident. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. 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 obstruction sets the joint, not the wall. 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. Where a landlord or housing provider is involved there is a specification to meet and a process to follow, and both are settled before a date is offered. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. The tops and the wall are rarely one approval.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. Height follows the sill, not the plan.

The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Every piece is dry-assembled on the bench before it is loaded, so a fabrication mistake is found in the workshop rather than in your kitchen. Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. A height barrier on the car park entrance rules out a tail-lift van outright, and the stone then transfers to a trolley at the barrier itself. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. The panel is sized to the turn, not to the wall alone.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Deck access means a long open walkway from the lift or the stair to the front door, and that walk happens with the piece on edge in whatever weather there is. Dense concrete takes adhesive better than fixings, which actually suits a large bonded panel. The plaster behind it is the real question.

Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. A mitred external return around it has to come from the same position in the slab, or the pattern visibly steps at the corner. Scribed along the top edge as well.