Splashbacks and upstands in Seething Wells

Yes. Seething Wells is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are KT6. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Kingston upon Thames. A visitor or a neighbour parked on the drive is a five-minute problem at eight in the morning and an hour-long one at eleven. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. These travel flat and get carried on edge, and both want room. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Kitchens in these flats are frequently in what was a bedroom or a return room, so the window is tall and its sill sits close to worktop height. 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. Old walls lean back, and a tall panel shows it. A deep scribe comes out of the nest, so how far the stone has to be relieved changes which part of the slab the piece is cut from. 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.

Concierge buildings want the goods entrance, a booked lift and proof of insurance, all of which is straightforward when it is asked for a week out. 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 tall panel cannot be tilted to clear a turn, so it is sized not to need to. Where the front garden has been paved over completely the van stands close to the house, and the route in is still a standard front door. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Where the van has to move, the panels come in first.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop replacement. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Panels for every unit, cut in one go. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. 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.

Where an overhang is too deep for steel on its own the choice is a leg at the end or a bracket underneath, and a bracket that lands where a knee goes is worse than no bracket at all. 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. Panel widths answer to the slab before the wall. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

A downstand over a run caps wall unit height before it caps anything else, and the splashback then takes its height from the steel rather than from the units. 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. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. A deferred splashback still comes off this drawing.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. The side return was an outside toilet and a coal store before it was ever a kitchen, and the walls left over from that are half a brick thick. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. A bowed wall gets measured at three heights first.

Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. Bollards, planters and a one-way service road can turn what looks like a ten-metre carry into a fifty-metre one. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. Panels are carried on edge from the tail lift to the wall.

No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. Encased steel is always bigger than the steel inside it, so the casing is what gets plotted, and a casing is rarely square to the wall it sits against. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. A bowed wall shows on a panel and hides under an upstand.

Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. 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. A conversion takes kitchen waste to a stack added to the outside of the building, which fixes the sink position long before anyone draws a layout. A 100mm upstand bedded on silicone is the honest answer where the plaster bows, because it rides what a tall panel exposes. Sockets in a stud wall move more easily than sockets in brick.