Splashbacks and upstands in Shoreditch

Yes. Shoreditch is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC2A, E1, E2. It is run from the Essex side, covering Essex & East London. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. That is why they are crated the way they are. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The goods lift is generous and the flat entrance often is not, so the tightest point on the route is inside the flat rather than in the building. Setting proud is usually the better call — it reads as a deliberate detail rather than a bad fit, and it avoids trying to scribe stone to a surface that has no consistent plane. Decided before fabrication starts. Big island slabs live or die on the goods lift here, and if there is not one the island gets a mitred join and the client needs telling before anything is cut.

One-way streets, weekend closures, market traffic and loading bans through the day, with permit parking enforced seven days in places. Converted buildings often have a goods lift or a loading door, which is worth confirming because the industrial stairwells are steep and open. The lift has to be booked and blanketed before anything moves, and that booking needs to cover the old tops coming out as well as the new stone going in. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. It decides panel size before anything is cut. Tell us what the approach looks like when you book the template and it gets built into the day rather than discovered on it.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication, worktop installation and worktop design & quotation. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. 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. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Same batch, same run, same day. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. Siliconed to the worktop, never grouted.

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. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Corners get their own pieces. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

An intruding steel column, a brick pier or a downstand breaks a run that would otherwise have been one clean piece. 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. Make the wall good first, or accept the detail. 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. Consent for the work sits with the freeholder or the managing body, and getting it in writing first avoids a crew arriving to a locked door. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Decided before fabrication, not after.