Splashbacks and upstands in Norwood Green

Yes. Norwood Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are UB2. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Ealing. Controlled hours that end in the middle of the afternoon make the second half of the day easy and put the whole problem in the first half. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Long panels and long carries do not mix. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

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. 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. 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. An upstand rides what a panel exposes.

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. 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. The panel is sized to the turn, not to the wall alone. A short lunchtime window of control exists to keep commuters off the street, and it still catches a trade van standing there for an hour. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Off the van last, and never in a hurry.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication and worktop installation. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. 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. 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. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. The offcuts finish the room.

A hob cut-out and the floor penetration feeding it have to land over the same cabinet, and where they do not it is the stone that gets redrawn rather than the pipework. 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. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. 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. Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. A deferred splashback still comes off this drawing.

Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Sign-in at the gate, a permit on the dash and a named contact are usually wanted before anything comes off the van. 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. It travels on edge, so the clearance is checked on edge.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. A side return glazed over gives the room a second aspect and a second floor level, because the old external threshold is still under the finish. The ragged band left when old tiles and laminate come off together is what usually decides upstand over full height. Solid plaster on brick takes a panel; a hollow wall wants thought.

Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. Ceilings are lower here than in the terraces of fifty years earlier, so wall units and a full-height panel compete for the same band of wall. Where a full-height panel is wanted, the wall is made good first or the panel rocks on the high spots. A chimney breast breaks the run and the panels follow it.

Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. A shallow bay or a squared-off rear window means the run beneath it is rarely the same depth at both ends. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Twenty millimetres of packing behind a panel is not a fix.