Splashbacks and upstands in Southall

Yes. Southall is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are UB1, UB2. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Ealing. Where the drive falls away from the house the trolley wants to run, and where it climbs the same load has to be pushed the whole way up. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Where the van has to move, the panels come in first. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

The original larder or store cupboard usually survives in a corner, and that alcove is deeper than the units and squarer than the walls around it. 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. The wall gets made good first or the gap shows. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. 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 window board below worktop height ends the upstand argument.

Even an easy kerbside carry wants the pavement clear at the tail lift, because a three-metre piece on edge has a swing radius nobody expects until it is swinging. 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. They come in last so nothing is carried past them. A visitor or a neighbour parked on the drive is a five-minute problem at eight in the morning and an hour-long one at eleven. 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.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop fabrication. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. A family adding a self-contained unit is paying for the whole conversion, and the worktop is one line in a much longer job. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Plot spec panels are ordered by the plot, not the room. Where several adults share the cooking the kitchen is in use most of the day, so a fitting slot has to be agreed with more people than usual. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. One conversion drawing repeats its mistakes six times.

A galley closed at one end takes a short return across the top, and that little piece carries the same edge work, the same handling and nearly the same cost as a full length. 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. A peninsula end takes a panel on both faces. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. 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. Full height wants a flat wall behind it. 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. An owner paying for this directly tends to want the reasoning as much as the number, so a quote that explains why a join sits where it does is worth more than a cheaper one that does not. Full-height panels need the wall made good first, which is another trade and another timescale. Agreed with whoever is paying for both.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. Walls at both ends mean two scribes on every piece, and a run that has to drop between two fixed points has no tolerance left to give away. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Scribe to the wall rather than stretch the panel.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Rear rooms of this date have a wide sash or a pair of garden doors, so a good deal of the wall the run wants is glass. Where a client wants a full-height piece behind the hob, it usually sits in the old chimney recess, and that recess is rarely square top to bottom or side to side, so it has to be templated as a trapezium rather than a rectangle. Solid plaster on brick takes a panel; a hollow wall wants thought.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. Each obstruction is another joint, and it is priced as one.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. Internal walls are lath on timber studs while the flank walls are brick, so two walls in the same kitchen take a fixing completely differently. Sockets and switches are cut to measured positions with the faceplates off, not to the positions shown on a drawing. A chimney breast breaks the run and the panels follow it.