Splashbacks and upstands in Petts Wood

Yes. Petts Wood is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are BR5. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bromley. A dropped kerb wide enough for a car is not always wide enough for a long-wheelbase van, and the width of the crossing decides the rest. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. The longer the walk, the fewer the panels per trip. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

Where the dividing wall has come out there is a steel over the opening and a nib of the old wall left at each end, and a run turning that corner has to clear both nibs. These kitchens are nearly always retiled at least twice, and stripping the old tiles takes the bottom course of plaster with it because the original laminate top ran underneath the tiles rather than up to them. Cut from the same slab run as the tops. Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. 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. Height follows the sill, not the plan.

A side gate and a back door mean the stone never goes through the house at all, which keeps the dust and most of the risk outside. 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. Panels are carried on edge from the tail lift to the wall. Where a car has to come off the drive first, it is worth knowing whose car it is and whether the keys are in the house on the morning. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. A narrow gap between parked cars decides how a panel turns.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is 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 work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. 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. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Panels for every unit, cut in one go.

An L can be mitred at the corner for a continuous look or butt-jointed over the gable, and the two are different money and different risk. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Corners get their own pieces. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. 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. Scribed along the top edge as well. The old tiling must be off and the wall made good and dry before templating, not on fitting day. A quartz sample left on the counter for a week under the actual kitchen lights settles more arguments than any showroom, and an owner is the only person in a position to do that. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Two trades, two budgets, one drawing.

The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Two runs and a return into a rear extension is the pattern, and the return is the piece that never nests neatly on a slab. 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.

An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. The windows were steel to begin with and have been swapped for plastic in openings lined out to suit, so the reveal is now deeper than the brickwork behind it. 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. Decided before fabrication starts.

Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. A gate post set narrower than the opening looks generous from the road and stops a wide piece a metre in. Full-height panels are the awkward thing to move, light enough to lift and long enough to flex on the way. These travel flat and get carried on edge, and both want room.

Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. The obstruction breaks the length, every time.