Splashbacks and upstands in Northwood

Yes. Northwood is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are HA6. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hillingdon. Where the drive is too short for the van the back end overhangs the footway, and a footway is a route people are using rather than spare space. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Two hands and a clear route, or it waits on the van. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

The incoming main and the stopcock come up through the floor at the old scullery wall, so whatever unit stands over them has to stay removable. 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. The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. 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. An upstand rides what a panel exposes.

Bollards, planters and a one-way service road can turn what looks like a ten-metre carry into a fifty-metre one. 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. That is agreed at template, not on fitting day. Having the van on the drive means the load can be staged, so the heavy pieces come off last and go straight in instead of standing outside. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. The longer the walk, the fewer the panels per trip.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication and worktop installation. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. 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. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. The offcuts finish the room.

A corbel on show under an overhang is a decision about how the piece looks from a stool, so it gets settled alongside the edge profile rather than left to whoever fits 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. The seam sits in shadow or it sits in a corner. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. 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. Make the wall good first, or accept the detail. The old tiling must be off and the wall made good and dry before templating, not on fitting day. An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. 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.

If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. Order is what matters: a slab is templated before it is cut, so an uncut slab is straightforward and one already machined for another kitchen is not. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. Less to clean, for whoever cleans it.

Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. The barrier, the entry code and the estate rules decide when a van can get near the door, and none of that is negotiable on the day. 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.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Units have to be fitted, fixed and level before templating, and it is better to hear that at the template than on the fitting day. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. Scribed, dubbed out, or set proud. Pick one.

Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. Estate roads are often too tight for a long-wheelbase van to turn, so the carry starts a good deal further from the door than a map suggests. Panels travel on edge in a frame, and the frame needs the same clearance the finished piece does. It travels on edge, so the clearance is checked on edge.