Splashbacks and upstands in Southend

Yes. Southend is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE6. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. Where the front garden has been paved over completely the van stands close to the house, and the route in is still a standard front door. 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.

The original kitchen was a small rear room with a larder and a back door, and nearly all of them have since been opened into the dining room. That leaves a ragged band right where the upstand has to sit, which is fine for a 100mm upstand that covers it, but a full-height splashback needs the wall made good first or it will rock on the high spots. A hundred millimetres covers more than it looks. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. 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. The obstruction breaks the length, every time.

A loading bay or a red route puts a clock on the unload, so the pieces come off in the order they will be fitted rather than the order they were loaded. 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 front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. A panel carried past a live lane gets a second pair of hands.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. That says something about the housing round here, not about the work. Quote, cut and fit are the same here as on any other part of the patch. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Six kitchens, one socket layout, one panel drawing. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. The annexe gets the same panel as the main run.

One leg of an L is nearly always the working run and the other little more than a landing space, but both are templated, cut and edged to the same standard. 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. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. 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 tall panel exposes what an upstand forgives. The old tiling must be off and the wall made good and dry before templating, not on fitting day. An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. 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. 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. Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. 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.

The fit follows 5 to 10 working days after the template, and nothing is cut before that visit because nothing is cut from a plan. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. There is nothing to pay before the template visit. A shallow bay or a squared-off rear window means the run beneath it is rarely the same depth at both ends. Splashbacks come off the same slab run as the tops, which means the decision has to be made before fabrication starts. Height is taken at the shortest point of the run.

Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. The return piece is the awkward one on a slab: short, full depth, and rarely nesting neatly against the long lengths, so yield rather than area is what moves the material figure. The panel behind a hob is usually the tallest piece in the kitchen, and its height is set by the extractor above it rather than by the wall cupboards either side. Every internal corner is two pieces, not one.

Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. What changes is the surface. The carcasses underneath stay where they are. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. Nothing this long gets walked while a warden is circling.