Splashbacks and upstands in Shortlands

Yes. Shortlands is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are BR2. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bromley. A skip, a delivery lorry or a run of scaffolding takes the frontage the van needed, so the street is worth a look the day before rather than on the morning. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Distance from tail lift to door is the whole risk here. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The addition is one room wide, so the run is a galley with a door at one end and a window at the other and no wall long enough for anything else. 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. Panels expose a wall; upstands forgive one. Where the sill lands inside the height an upstand would occupy there is no upstand, and the stone either dies into the reveal or stops short of it. 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. Upstands sit tight because both edges are cut.

An inward-opening door swinging back against the wall leaves less clear opening than the frame measures, and a storm porch in front of it is tighter again. 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. Nothing is leaned anywhere it could slide down. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. A long carry turns a light piece into an awkward one.

Often enough. It is one of the three, behind worktop installation. The template, the workshop and the installers are the same either way. 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. 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. 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. 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.

Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. 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. Vein direction carries up from the top below. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Casement handles and stays swing down into the space above the worktop, so the clearance that counts is the one measured with the window open. 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. A breast return is scribed on three edges. 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. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Two trades, two budgets, one drawing.

The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. Full-height panels are the awkward thing to move, light enough to lift and long enough to flex on the way. Panels come across in one pass with the route already cleared.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. The step down from the main house into the addition is commonly a hundred to a hundred and fifty millimetres, which gives the kitchen a different floor datum from the rest of the ground floor. A 100mm upstand bedded on silicone is the honest answer where the plaster bows, because it rides what a tall panel exposes. What the wall can take decides how tall the stone goes.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. Set it proud on a subframe and the gap becomes deliberate.

Thickness has to be known before quoting, since it decides the edge, the cut-outs and what the units carry. If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. 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. Six kitchens, one socket layout, one panel drawing.