Splashbacks and upstands in Shirley

Yes. Shirley is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are CR0. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Croydon. A shared drive is only useful if the neighbour is not the one parked behind the van, so we ask which side the standing belongs to before the date is set. 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. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The floor is a solid slab with a screed over it, which is stable underfoot and rarely flat across a long run. That leaves a ragged band right where the upstand has to sit, which is fine for a 100mm upstand that covers it, but a full-height splashback needs the wall made good first or it will rock on the high spots. Old plaster rarely gives you a flat metre. Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. 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. Height follows the sill, not the plan.

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. 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. Full height goes in only where the way in allows full height. Drives with a dropped kerb and a tight turn-in take a long van at an angle, and that angle decides which side the tail lift can work from. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. A panel carried past a live lane gets a second pair of hands.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Full height behind the hob is less for a tenant to scrub. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Grout lines are the first thing to fail in a let.

A waterfall leg is a separate piece bonded to the top on a mitre, so the floor it stands on has to be level enough for that mitre to close along its full height. 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. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. 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. Scribed along the top edge as well. The old tiling must be off and the wall made good and dry before templating, not on fitting day. Where two people share the decision it helps to know early which of them is settling the edge profile and which is settling the budget, because it is rarely the same person for both. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Whoever specifies it signs the drawing.

Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Internal walls are hollow clay block or stud rather than solid brick, so two points a metre apart on the same wall want two different fixings. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Panel thickness changes what the sockets need behind them.

What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. It is the heaviest single piece in the kitchen, so the number of hands needed on the day and the route in are worked out from that piece rather than from the runs. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Vein direction carries up from the top below.

Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Nothing is payable in advance of the template. A serving hatch through to the dining room is common, and closing one up leaves a panel of newer wall exactly where the run passes. Splashbacks come off the same slab run as the tops, which means the decision has to be made before fabrication starts. Height is taken at the shortest point of the run.

A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. Rear access usually lets us fit longer pieces whole, so the join count ends up decided by the slab rather than by the building. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. Upstands make almost any turn a worktop will not.