Splashbacks and upstands in Royal Albert Wharf

Yes. Royal Albert Wharf is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E16. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Newham. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. The crate stays on the van until the route in is clear. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Open-plan living makes the kitchen furniture rather than utility, so the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab. The plasterboard is genuinely flat here, so a full-height splashback sits well and a slim upstand looks almost redundant, but the sockets are the problem, because they are set out to the developer's original kitchen and often land at odd heights or right on a joint line. The age of the plaster decides the fixing, not the finish. Where a peninsula returns into a stud wall the load has to sit on the units, with the wall doing no more than steadying it. 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. A breast return is scribed on three edges.

A lift out of service for the day turns a straightforward install into a stair carry, so the slot gets confirmed with whoever manages the building rather than against a calendar. 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. A door frame catches a tall panel long before a short one. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Distance from tail lift to door is the whole risk here.

It is on the short list of three for this patch, with worktop replacement first. Same template, same workshop, same fitters whichever it is. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Reordered next year, it will not match. 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. Full height behind the hob is less for a tenant to scrub.

A peninsula projects into circulation space, so its outer corners usually take a radius rather than a point, and that radius is agreed at template rather than assumed. 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. A peninsula end takes a panel on both faces. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A lightweight stud partition will not carry a breakfast bar or a peninsula end, and stone finds that out faster than laminate ever did. 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. Set it proud on a subframe and the gap becomes deliberate. Any socket you intend to move must be moved and re-plastered before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece of stone. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. 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.

Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. Dot-and-dab plasterboard sounds solid and is hollow behind, so anything fixed through it has to hit a dab or a batten rather than a void. 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 lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. Car depth is the number that settles it wherever a piece cannot be stood upright, and most residential cars are shallower than the run they are serving. 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. Joint positions follow from that.

Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. These buildings have firm rules about what can be propped open, left in a lobby or carried through the residents entrance. Every socket, switch and any USB point has to be cut out of the stone to the actual measured position, so the template has to be taken with the faceplates off and the back boxes visible. The wall makes that decision, not the brochure.

How much slab you hold matters: upstands and any remake have to come out of the same batch. Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. The workmanship guarantee is the same either way. It does not extend to a material we did not supply. 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. Grout lines are the first thing to fail in a let.