Splashbacks and upstands in South Hornchurch

Yes. South Hornchurch is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM13. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. Where the van cannot turn on the plot it has to arrive already facing the right way, so the approach along the street is part of the plan. 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. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

Meters were moved out to a box on the flank wall on a later programme, and the cupboard they came out of is usually still standing in the corner. That suits a full-height piece, because a large flat panel bonded across its back is more stable on concrete than a run of small tiles ever was. What the wall can take decides how tall the stone goes. A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. 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. A tall panel exposes what an upstand forgives.

Bollards, planters and a one-way service road can turn what looks like a ten-metre carry into a fifty-metre one. 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. The frame they travel in needs the clearance as well. A drive behind an electric gate depends on somebody being in to open it and on the gate staying open while the load comes off. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. A panel carried past a live lane gets a second pair of hands.

Yes, one of the three we see most, with worktop replacement ahead of it. Same visit to template, same workshop, same installers on the day. 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. Grout lines are the first thing to fail in a let. 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. Six kitchens, one socket layout, one panel drawing.

Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. 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. External corners are mitred, not butted. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. 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. Scribe the top edge too or it stands off. Any surface trunking or conduit has to be rerouted or accepted and boxed before templating, because the stone cannot be scribed around a live conduit on site. A leaseholder paying for their own kitchen inside managed stock still needs the freeholder to consent, and that consent is about the building and the common parts rather than about the worktop. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. A deferred splashback still comes off this drawing.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. 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. The sill caps the upstand before anything else does.

A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. The ground floor is a solid slab with a bitumen membrane and no void under it, so services either run on the surface or get chased into something hard. Dense concrete takes adhesive better than fixings, which actually suits a large bonded panel. Old walls lean back, and a tall panel shows it.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. Corner sinks and corner hobs sit exactly where the joint wants to be, so on an L the cut-out positions get settled before the join positions do. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Panel height is set by the extractor.

Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. Copper pipework is clipped along the top of the skirting rather than buried in many of these, and it holds the carcasses off the wall by a few millimetres. The rough band left where tiles took the plaster with them is covered by the upstand rather than made good twice. Sockets in a stud wall move more easily than sockets in brick.