Splashbacks and upstands in Queensbury

Yes. Queensbury is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW9, HA8. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Brent. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. A narrow gap between parked cars decides how a panel turns. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

These were built in short runs of six or eight houses, so the party walls are solid brick and the rear elevation is a straight line with no outriggers. 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. The age of the plaster decides the fixing, not the finish. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. 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.

Pendant fittings over the stairwell and anything hung on the half-landing come down first, because a piece on edge sweeps a wider arc than the people carrying it. 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. A shared drive is only useful if the neighbour is not the one parked behind the van, so we ask which side the standing belongs to before the date is set. 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.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. 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. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. 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.

One leg of an L is nearly always the working run and the other little more than a landing space, but both are templated, cut and edged to the same standard. 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. Corners get their own pieces. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. 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. Nothing gets hidden behind a full-height panel. The old tiling must be off and the wall made good and dry before templating, not on fitting day. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. An owner can wait for it; a void period cannot.

Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. The run decides where that joint falls.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. Drives with a dropped kerb and a tight turn-in take a long van at an angle, and that angle decides which side the tail lift can work from. 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.

What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. 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. The reveal decides where the stone dies.

The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. The return piece is the awkward one on a slab: short, full depth, and rarely nesting neatly against the long lengths, so yield rather than area is what moves the material figure. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. The panel seam sits over the worktop seam.