Splashbacks and upstands in Richmond

Yes. Richmond is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TW9, TW10. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of the borough. A permit covering the street is permission to park rather than a space reserved on it, and on a full street the difference is the whole morning. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. The crate exists for the walk from the van. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

Electrics went in at conversion, some in surface trunking and some chased into lath and plaster, so no cable route in these rooms is safe to assume. 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. What the wall can take decides how tall the stone goes. A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. 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. Nothing gets hidden behind a full-height panel.

Where a basement car park is the only way up from the parking level the carry starts below ground, and two lifts in one building rarely share the same internal dimensions. 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 stand upright in the van and stay upright until they are on the wall. Where the household has used up the visitor permits it gets for the year, the remaining options are a suspension or a paid bay and both belong on the quote. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. A tall panel and a timed bay is the worst combination here.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. That is the local housing talking rather than anything about the job. It is priced, cut and fitted no differently here than anywhere else we cover. Batching several kitchens together is the one situation where buying a whole slab is cheaper per kitchen rather than more expensive. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Six kitchens, one socket layout, one panel drawing. A licensed shared house has fire-door and escape-route rules that decide how and when stone can be carried through the common parts. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. The annexe gets the same panel as the main run.

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. 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. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. 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 reveal decides where the stone dies. 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. Full-height panels need the wall made good first, which is another trade and another timescale. Nothing goes behind the hob until the wall is signed off.

The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. Carcasses stay. Surface changes. That is the whole of it. Estate roads inside a controlled zone are sometimes managed privately rather than by the council, which changes who has to be asked. Full-height panels are the awkward thing to move, light enough to lift and long enough to flex on the way. They go in with the first load where the stop is short.

Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. How much slab you hold matters: upstands and any remake have to come out of the same batch. Four kitchens ordered together take one template visit and one delivery, and that is where the saving comes from rather than from a discount on the stone. Upstands are the cheapest way to finish several kitchens consistently, and they come out of the offcuts the tops leave behind. A repeated spec needs a repeatable splashback.

Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. Where the walls have been dry-lined over the old lath there is a void behind the board and no solid fixing until a batten is found. 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.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. A dishwasher door on one side and an oven door on the other cannot both stand open in a narrow aisle, so which appliance goes where matters more in this shape than in any other. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Socket cut-outs are machined, not chipped in on site.