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. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. 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.

A detached house of this age has a drive, a side path and a back door, so access is rarely the constraint and the design can follow the room. The ragged band left when old tiles and laminate come off together is what usually decides upstand over full height. The wall makes that decision, not the brochure. Islands here regularly exceed 3.2m, which means either a jumbo slab or a deliberate mitred joint, and that decision has to be made before slab selection not after.

The green itself is conservation-controlled with narrow lanes, but the surrounding houses have wide gated drives. Tentelow Lane is the practical route in. 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. 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 decides panel size before anything is cut.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop design & quotation, worktop fabrication and worktop installation. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as 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. Same batch, same run, same day. 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. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. Sockets final before template.

On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. Corners get their own pieces. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. 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. An upstand rides what a panel exposes. The old tiling must be off and the wall made good and dry before templating, not on fitting day. The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. Splashbacks are cut from the same slab run as the tops, so they have to be decided before fabrication, not after. Decided before fabrication, not after.