Splashbacks and upstands in Penge

Yes. Penge is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE20. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bromley. A van waiting on a loading concession has somebody standing with it, because a vehicle left unattended is the one that collects the ticket. 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. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

The flat below hears the floor more than the walls, so lifting boards to move a waste run is a conversation with a neighbour before it is a morning of work. 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. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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.

A Victorian hall arch sits lower than the ceiling either side of it, and it is the point a piece carried on edge meets first. 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. They come in last so nothing is carried past them. 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. 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.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Whichever it is, the template and the fitters do not change. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Less to clean, for whoever cleans it. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Panels for every unit, cut in one go.

A dishwasher door on one side and an oven door on the other cannot both stand open in a narrow aisle, so which appliance goes where matters more in this shape than in any other. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Vein direction carries up from the top below. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. 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. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Priced on its own line so it can be deferred.

Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. A meter cupboard set into the hall wall narrows the run at exactly the height a carried piece travels. 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. Suction lifters take a panel where hands cannot get a grip.

Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A window at one end and a doorway at the other means one end of the run is lit from behind and the other is interrupted, so the two ends of the same length behave differently. 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.

On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. The units below stay exactly as they are; only the surface is replaced. 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. Full-height panels are the awkward thing to move, light enough to lift and long enough to flex on the way. A tall panel and a timed bay is the worst combination here.

Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. A spare panel is cheaper now than next year.