Splashbacks and upstands in Shooters Hill

Yes. Shooters Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE18. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Greenwich. Where the drive is too short for the van the back end overhangs the footway, and a footway is a route people are using rather than spare space. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Where the van has to move, the panels come in first. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

These houses usually sit in their own grounds with a long approach, so the carry from van to door is longer than anything inside the building. These runs are long and often include a range recess, so the splashback is nearly always more than one piece and the joint placement matters, put it in a corner or over a hob centre line, not randomly in the middle of a clear run. Cut from the same slab run as the tops. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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. The pier takes a joint against it, not across it.

A level threshold with hard standing outside it is the one arrangement where a full run goes in without a single re-grip. 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. Panel size is checked against the tightest point rather than the average one. Having the van on the drive means the load can be staged, so the heavy pieces come off last and go straight in instead of standing outside. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. A panel carried past a live lane gets a second pair of hands.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop fabrication. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. 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. 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. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. 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.

The offcut taken out of the middle for a hob is a large usable piece, and it is worth deciding early whether it becomes an upstand or goes in the skip. 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, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. 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. A window board below worktop height ends the upstand argument. The range and extractor must be sited and the window cill finished before the template, as both fix the vertical limits of the splashback. An owner paying for this directly tends to want the reasoning as much as the number, so a quote that explains why a join sits where it does is worth more than a cheaper one that does not. 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.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. The tail lift is still the pinch point, because the piece has to be walked off it onto the trolley while it is sitting at chest height. 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. They come in last so nothing is carried past them.

Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. The units below stay exactly as they are; only the surface is replaced. A dropped kerb wide enough for a car is not always wide enough for a long-wheelbase van, and the width of the crossing decides the rest. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. Nothing this long gets walked while a warden is circling.

A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. It is walked round rather than looked at from one side, so the direction the veining runs along it cannot be hidden against a wall the way it can on a perimeter run. 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.

Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. Every piece is dry-assembled on the bench before it is loaded, so a fabrication mistake is found in the workshop rather than in your kitchen. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Suction lifters need a clean dry face to hold, so in the wet the pads come off and the piece goes back to being carried on webbing by hand. Panels travel on edge in a frame, and the frame needs the same clearance the finished piece does. Suction lifters take a panel where hands cannot get a grip.