Splashbacks and upstands in South Hampstead

Yes. South Hampstead is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW6, NW3. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. One trip is always better than three. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Original walls are thick, lime-plastered and rarely straight, which makes dry-laying and scribing the bulk of the fitting day. 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. The wall makes that decision, not the brochure. Winder stairs are worse than narrow ones for slab work because the effective diagonal shrinks at the turn, so size pieces off the tightest tread rather than the landing.

Permit bays fill early and many villas sit back behind long front paths, so the carry is 15-25 metres before you even reach the door. No lifts in the conversions, and the original staircases are generous in width but have winders at the turn. Weight tells on a staircase more than anywhere else, because there is nowhere to set a piece down mid-flight and no way to change your grip once it is moving. 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. That is agreed at template, not on fitting day.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. 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. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. Sockets final before template. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Same batch, same run, same day.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. Joint placement is a decision, not an accident. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. 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. The range and extractor must be sited and the window cill finished before the template, as both fix the vertical limits of the splashback. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. 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.