Splashbacks and upstands in Northwick Park

Yes. Northwick Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are HA1, HA3. It is run from the Watford side, covering Hertfordshire & North London. 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. 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.

Balcony access and long communal corridors are often the carry route, and both are narrower than they look with a piece on edge. Each return needs its own piece with a mitred or butted external corner, and those pieces should come off the same slab so the movement lines up across the corner. The wall makes that decision, not the brochure. Rental refits want the fewest possible visits, so template, fabricate and fit needs sequencing tightly around tenancy change dates.

Flat, wide roads with drives on the houses; the flat blocks have communal entrances, half-landings and generally no lift, which limits piece size to what two people can turn on a stair. Weight tells on a staircase more than anywhere else, because there is nowhere to set a piece down mid-flight and no way to change your grip once it is moving. 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. Tell us what the approach looks like when you book the template and it gets built into the day rather than discovered on it.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. Siliconed to the worktop, never grouted. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Siliconed to the worktop, never grouted.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Joint placement is a decision, not an accident. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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 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 riser boxing must be finished in its final form and any access panel positions agreed before the template, since the stone is set out around them. Quartz is the sensible default in a rental: nothing to seal, nothing to maintain, and nothing an incoming tenant needs briefing on. Full-height panels need the wall made good first, which is another trade and another timescale. The wall has to be ready.