Splashbacks and upstands in Park Royal

Yes. Park Royal is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW10, W3. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Brent. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. 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. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

Poured screed over steel decking can fall away across a long run, so level is checked across the whole room before anything is packed. Setting proud is usually the better call: it reads as a deliberate detail rather than a bad fit, and it avoids trying to scribe stone to a surface that has no consistent plane. Where the plaster undulates, the shorter piece wins. A deep scribe comes out of the nest, so how far the stone has to be relieved changes which part of the slab the piece is cut from. 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. Behind the boxing it becomes two pieces.

A level threshold with hard standing outside it is the one arrangement where a full run goes in without a single re-grip. 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. Two people to a panel, however light it looks on the van. 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. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. A panel carried past a live lane gets a second pair of hands.

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. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. The offcuts finish the room. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. 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.

Both runs are in view at the same time, so the two pieces are taken off the same area of slab and the veining is set to run the same way on each side. 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. Vein direction carries up from the top below. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A downstand over a run caps wall unit height before it caps anything else, and the splashback then takes its height from the steel rather than from the units. 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. Nothing gets hidden behind a full-height panel. Decide and build the backing method, scribe, subframe or board, before the template, because the templater is measuring to that face and not to the brick. Nobody reseals a worktop annually in a let property, so a material that depends on being resealed is the wrong specification however well it photographs. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. What repeats across flats is recorded once and repeated.

A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. Encased steel is always bigger than the steel inside it, so the casing is what gets plotted, and a casing is rarely square to the wall it sits against. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. The reveal decides where the stone dies.

Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Ceilings are high and there are usually no wall units, so a splashback runs to whatever height is decided rather than to a cupboard. Setting the panel proud on a subframe with a shadow gap reads as a detail; scribing to raw brick rarely does. The tile bed comes off before anything is measured.

The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. The carcasses stay put. Only the surface changes. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. Full-height panels are the awkward thing to move, light enough to lift and long enough to flex on the way. Nothing this long gets walked while a warden is circling.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. A galley closed at one end takes a short return across the top, and that little piece carries the same edge work, the same handling and nearly the same cost as a full length. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Behind an island there is no wall to hide against.