Splashbacks and upstands in Streatham Hill

Yes. Streatham Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW2. It is run from the New Malden side, covering South West London & Surrey. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Handling is where these pieces get damaged. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Permitted works hours are commonly weekdays with a late start and an early finish, so a one-day fit is planned around the porter and the lift. Mansion block kitchens are full of boxed-in soil stacks, gas risers and heating pipework, and the boxing is usually plywood or plasterboard that stops short of the ceiling, so the splashback run gets broken up by returns rather than running clean wall to wall. The wall makes that decision, not the brochure. The 1930s galley kitchens are barely 1.8m wide, which means a standard 600mm top plus an opposite run leaves under 600mm of walking space — check the client actually wants both sides before fabricating.

Several of the blocks are listed or in a conservation area, so no fixings to communal fabric and no propping doors open; lifts are original and small. The A23 is a red route with no stopping, so unloading happens on side roads and the carry starts from there. Piece length is set by the internal diagonal of the lift car, not by the length of the slab. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. Joint positions follow from that. Tell us what the approach looks like when you book the template and it gets built into the day rather than discovered on it.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Siliconed to the worktop, never grouted. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. Sockets final before template.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Joint placement is a decision, not an accident. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. 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. Make the wall good first, or accept the detail. The riser boxing must be finished in its final form and any access panel positions agreed before the template, since the stone is set out around them. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. The wall has to be ready.