Splashbacks and upstands in St Margarets

Yes. St Margarets is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TW1. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Richmond upon Thames. A van waiting on a loading concession has somebody standing with it, because a vehicle left unattended is the one that collects the ticket. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Rushing the last piece off the van is how panels break. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

Windows are low and wide with deep timber cills and leaded lights, so a run under one meets joinery rather than plaster. Behind a range cooker with gas burners, granite or sintered stone is the sensible pick; quartz has a resin binder and does not enjoy sustained radiant heat at close range, so keep it out of the immediate hob zone or specify a different material for that panel. Height, returns and sockets, all settled on site. 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. 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.

A side gate and a back door mean the stone never goes through the house at all, which keeps the dust and most of the risk outside. 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. Full height goes in only where the way in allows full height. Controlled hours that end in the middle of the afternoon make the second half of the day easy and put the whole problem in the first half. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. Two hands and a clear route, or it waits on the van.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

Power and waste come up through the floor, and where they surface decides which cabinet can hold a sink and which one cannot. 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. Behind an island there is no wall to hide against. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. 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. Scribe the top edge too or it stands off. The range and extractor must be sited and the window cill finished before the template, as both fix the vertical limits of the splashback. Someone who expects to still be there in ten years asks different questions: how a honed finish marks, what a sealer does and does not do, and whether a chip by the sink can be repaired in place. Full-height panels need the wall made good first, which is another trade and another timescale. The wall has to be ready.

A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. Internal walls are lath and plaster on studs with heavy framing behind, so a fixing finds either nothing at all or something very solid. Long runs mean more than one piece, and the joint belongs in a corner or on a hob centre line rather than mid-run. A hundred millimetres covers more than it looks.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. A hob cut-out and the floor penetration feeding it have to land over the same cabinet, and where they do not it is the stone that gets redrawn rather than the pipework. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. Socket cut-outs are machined, not chipped in on site.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. The sill caps the upstand before anything else does.

Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. Taking the old tops off and disposing of them is its own line on the quote rather than something folded into the stone price. What changes is the surface. The carcasses underneath stay where they are. A short lunchtime window of control exists to keep commuters off the street, and it still catches a trade van standing there for an hour. Full-height panels are the awkward thing to move, light enough to lift and long enough to flex on the way. The longer the walk, the fewer the panels per trip.