Splashbacks and upstands in Strand-on-the-Green

Yes. Strand-on-the-Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W4. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hounslow. Overhanging branches clear the roof of a car and catch the roof of a van, so the drive is looked at from the driver seat rather than from the doorstep. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. A panel carried past a live lane gets a second pair of hands. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The staircase rises over the back room in a good number of these, so a sloping bulkhead sits over one end of the run and a piece cannot be stood on edge beneath it. 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. A chimney breast breaks the run and the panels follow it. A window board sitting below finished worktop height leaves two choices, drop the top under it or notch the stone around it, and both cost more than a straight run. 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 breast return is scribed on three edges.

A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. 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. Suction lifters take a panel where hands cannot get a grip. On a drive that only takes one vehicle nose-in, the van has to reverse the whole length of it to get back out, which decides which way it goes in. 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.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop fabrication. That is the local housing talking rather than anything about the job. It is priced, cut and fitted no differently here than anywhere else we cover. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. The annexe gets the same panel as the main run. 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. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. A repeated spec needs a repeatable splashback.

A full-depth tall unit projects past the worktop line, and the run has to be scribed against its side panel instead of carrying on past 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. Scribe to the wall rather than stretch the panel. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A cill projecting forward of the plaster line pushes the back edge out, and the units then stand off the wall by that amount for the whole length. 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. Set it proud on a subframe and the gap becomes deliberate. 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. Flats bought out of managed stock keep the original kitchen dimensions long after the ownership changed, so the layout says very little about who is paying for the work. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Whoever specifies it signs the drawing.

The quote is itemised, so a job where you already hold the slab is the same job with the material line taken off it. Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. 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. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. One damaged panel, one twin already on the shelf.

The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. Carcasses stay. Surface changes. That is the whole of it. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. The distance from the standing to the actual kitchen door is the number that counts, since plenty of drives finish at a side gate and a garden path. Full-height panels are the awkward thing to move, light enough to lift and long enough to flex on the way. The crate stays on the van until the route in is clear.

Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Suspended timber floors flex underfoot, and anything that moves beneath a unit shows up later as a lipped join. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Window reveals decide where the run of stone stops.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. Where the sink and the hob face each other across the aisle, everything carried between them crosses the walkway, and that is the one movement the shape cannot design out. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Tall panels are what push a job into a second slab.