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 Richmond upon Thames. Enforcement zones rarely accept a trade van unloading stone as an exemption, so this gets sorted before the date is confirmed rather than argued about afterwards. 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.

Lease conditions and the other flats in the building decide when noisy work can happen, so the fitting day has a start and a finish that are not ours to set. 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. Cut from the same slab run as the tops. Georgian upper-floor flats have springy timber floors, so the units need levelling and packing before the top goes on or the joint opens within a month.

Conservation-area frontages with railings and steps, a strict CPZ with short-stay bays only, and a town centre that clogs at weekends; several riverside blocks flood-plan their basements, so lift access is from an upper lobby. Piece length is set by the internal diagonal of the lift car, not by the length of the slab. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. 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 replacement, worktop templating 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. Where a single building holds several small kitchens, the work arrives as one job rather than four, and it should be cut off the same slab run so the batches genuinely match. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Same batch, same run, same day. Small kitchens in a shared house are all short runs and tight cut-out spacing, which is more bench work per square metre than one large kitchen would be. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Siliconed to the worktop, never grouted.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. 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. Joint placement is a decision, not an accident. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. 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. 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. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Decided before fabrication, not after.