Splashbacks and upstands in Richmond Hill

Yes. Richmond Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TW10. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Richmond upon Thames. Block paving bedded on sand can rut under a fully loaded van, and that is said to the customer beforehand rather than explained afterwards. 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. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Original panelling and shutter boxes stand out from the structural wall, so the face the units meet is joinery rather than plaster. 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. Height, returns and sockets, all settled on site. Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. 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. Scribed, dubbed out, or set proud. Pick one.

Spindles and a newel cap stand proud of the string, so the usable width on a turn is measured to the handrail rather than to the wall behind 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. Suction lifters take a panel where hands cannot get a grip. Where the drive is shared, the half-hour the van spends in the way is agreed with the neighbour in advance rather than apologised for at the time. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. These travel flat and get carried on edge, and both want room.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop replacement. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. Reordered next year, it will not match.

Walls at both ends mean two scribes on every piece, and a run that has to drop between two fixed points has no tolerance left to give away. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Behind an island there is no wall to hide against. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. 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 obstruction sets the joint, not the wall. 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. One staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Nothing goes behind the hob until the wall is signed off.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. The top step is rarely the end of it, because a door swinging out onto the landing has to be held back before a piece can come off the flight. 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.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. 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. An aisle under a metre stops being a working space the moment two people are in it, and the depth of the tops either side is what decides whether that happens. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. Socket cut-outs are machined, not chipped in on site.

Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. A cast iron soil stack runs down the outside of the rear wall, so moving the sink means a fresh penetration through solid brick. Splashbacks come off the same slab run as the tops, which means the decision has to be made before fabrication starts. Height off the units, not off the old tiles.

A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. A basement is often reached by its own door under the front steps, and that door is smaller than anything else on the route. 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. A hundred millimetres covers more than it looks.