Splashbacks and upstands in Shoreditch

Yes. Shoreditch is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC2A, E1, E2. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Hackney. A single red line has hours and a double red line does not, and the difference decides whether an early start is a plan or a penalty. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. A panel carried past a live lane gets a second pair of hands. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

Original brickwork is uneven by ten millimetres or more across a bay, so the back edge is scribed to the actual face rather than to a line. Exposed brick is the defining issue: the face is uneven by 10mm or more across a bay, so a stone splashback either scribes to it, which means the back of the panel has to be relieved, or it is deliberately set proud on a subframe with a shadow reveal all round. What the wall can take decides how tall the stone goes. 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. The reveal decides where the stone dies.

Whether the stone can stand on end in the car is the first question, because a lift that takes 2.1m upright takes nothing like that lying flat. 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. Joint positions follow from that. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Nothing this long gets walked while a warden is circling.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication and worktop installation. 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. 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. 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. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. 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.

An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. 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. A bowed wall shows on a panel and hides under an upstand. Decide and build the backing method, scribe, subframe or board, before the template, because the templater is measuring to that face and not to the brick. Where a landlord or housing provider is involved there is a specification to meet and a process to follow, and both are settled before a date is offered. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. What repeats across flats is recorded once and repeated.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. Goods lifts and passenger lifts fail differently: one has a rated load that matters, the other has a door aperture that matters more. 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. It decides panel size before anything is cut.

Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. 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.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. Nothing changes hands until after the template. Open plan means long uninterrupted runs and an island in the middle of the room with every edge on show. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Boxed pipework decides the panel width before taste does.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. These read as easy from the outside and rarely are, since the flat entrance is often tighter than the goods lift. Socket positions, sill heights and wall flatness are the three things that settle this, and all three are properties of the building. Making the wall good first is cheaper than working around it.