Splashbacks and upstands in Peckham

Yes. Peckham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE15. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. Some zones are controlled for a short window in the middle of the day and open either side of it, which makes the timing of the visit the whole question. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Off the van last, and never in a hurry. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

The communal stair is wide and handsome and the flat door at the top of it is a standard leaf, which is where a long piece stops. Lath-and-plaster on the party wall and the chimney breast returns almost never runs true, so a 100mm upstand bedded on silicone is the honest answer here, it rides the bow and hides the junction the worktop can never close on its own. The tile bed comes off before anything is measured. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. 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. A bowed wall shows on a panel and hides under an upstand.

Where the garden is level and the back door is wide the pieces get staged outside on trestles and brought in one at a time as the fitters are ready for them. 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. Panels are carried on edge from the tail lift to the wall. A suspension only works if the cones and the notice are actually there on the morning, and now and then a car is sitting in the bay regardless. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. The crate exists for the walk from the van.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. Where a single building holds several small kitchens, the work arrives as one job rather than four, and it should be cut off the same slab run so the batches genuinely match. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Reordered next year, it will not match. Small kitchens in a shared house are all short runs and tight cut-out spacing, which is more bench work per square metre than one large kitchen would be. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Full height behind the hob is less for a tenant to scrub.

Walls at both ends mean two scribes on every piece, and a run that has to drop between two fixed points has no tolerance left to give away. 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. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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. Mitred returns come from one place in the slab. The chimney breast recess must be replastered and fully dry, and the hob and extractor positions fixed, before anyone templates a full-height piece into it. Where the provider has set the specification the material choice was made once for a great many kitchens, and the useful work is meeting it exactly rather than proposing something else on the day. Full-height panels need the wall made good first, which is another trade and another timescale. Deferred is workable; undecided is not.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. Ground floors fall away towards the garden across the whole footprint, so the units are packed up long before anything is measured for stone. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Sockets cut in the shop, not on site.

Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. Where the permit is a digital session rather than a paper one, somebody in the house has to start it at the hour the van actually arrives. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. A tall panel and a timed bay is the worst combination here.

Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. An aisle under a metre stops being a working space the moment two people are in it, and the depth of the tops either side is what decides whether that happens. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. Behind an island there is no wall to hide against.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. Grass and gravel will not take a loaded trolley, so a boarded track gets laid from the gate to the door before the first piece moves. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. The frame they travel in needs the clearance as well.