Splashbacks and upstands in Regent's Park

Yes. Regent's Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW1. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. Handling is where these pieces get damaged. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Rooms are tall with deep window reveals, and a run finishing into a reveal is templated to it rather than assumed square. 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. The wall makes that decision, not the brochure. In the Nash terraces you are working under listed consent against vaulted, uneven basement walls where nothing is square, so template on site and expect a scribe on every back edge.

The Outer Circle has strict waiting restrictions and no loading in front of the terraces, so access to the listed houses is by an area stair or a rear service entrance. The post-war estate has its own internal roads and lifts, which is a completely different set of rules on the same day. Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. 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. It decides panel size before anything is cut.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop design & quotation and worktop installation. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Same batch, same run, same day. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. Sockets final before template.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Corners get their own pieces. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. 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. An upstand rides what a panel exposes. 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 ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. Full-height panels need the wall made good first, which is another trade and another timescale. The wall has to be ready.