Splashbacks and upstands in Primrose Hill

Yes. Primrose Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW1, NW3. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. A single red line has hours and a double red line does not, and the difference decides whether an early start is a plan or a penalty. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. These travel flat and get carried on edge, and both want room. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Walls are thick, lime-plastered and built in a soft brick, so they take a scribe well and take a fixing badly. Where a client wants a full-height piece behind the hob, it usually sits in the old chimney recess, and that recess is rarely square top to bottom or side to side, so it has to be templated as a trapezium rather than a rectangle. Decided before fabrication starts. 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. Mitred returns come from one place in the slab.

A meter cupboard set into the hall wall narrows the run at exactly the height a carried piece travels. 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. Suction lifters take a panel where hands cannot get a grip. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. Where the van has to move, the panels come in first.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Panels for every unit, cut in one go. 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. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. A spare panel is cheaper now than next year.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. 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. Behind an island there is no wall to hide against. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

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. The pier takes a joint against it, not across it. 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. Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. 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.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. Full-height panels are the awkward thing to move, light enough to lift and long enough to flex on the way. A panel carried past a live lane gets a second pair of hands.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. Whether the kitchen sits straight ahead or off a turn at the end of the hall changes the maximum piece far more than the hall width does. 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. Nothing is leaned anywhere it could slide down.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. Gas, waste and later wiring were boxed in against the wall long after the house was built, and that boxing is what the run has to clear. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Height off the units, not off the old tiles.

Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. 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. A window board below worktop height ends the upstand argument.