Splashbacks and upstands in Rise Park

Yes. Rise Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM1. It is run from the Essex side, covering Essex & East London. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. 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.

Cottage estate houses were built to a small number of standard plans, so the kitchen is compact, roughly square and predictable in the good sense. 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. Cut from the same slab run as the tops. Because the layouts repeat across the estate we can usually predict the room, but the extensions vary wildly in squareness so nothing gets cut off a drawing.

Wide, quiet roads with driveways and dropped kerbs almost throughout, plus side gates giving a clean route to the rear extension without going through the house. The side passage is the measurement that matters, because a piece has to be carried flat down it and then turned in at the back door, and the turn is always tighter than the passage. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. Joint positions follow from that. Tell us what the approach looks like when you book the template and it gets built into the day rather than discovered on it.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop replacement and worktop templating. 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. Sockets final before template. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Same batch, same run, same day.

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. 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.

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. 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. Make the wall good first, or accept the detail. The old tiling must be off and the wall made good and dry before templating, not on fitting day. An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. Full-height panels need the wall made good first, which is another trade and another timescale. Decided before fabrication, not after.