Splashbacks and upstands in Streatham Hill

Yes. Streatham Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW2. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. The crate stays on the van until the route in is clear. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The flats are stacked identically, so the kitchen above sits directly over this one and its waste passes through the same boxing. 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. Nothing goes on a wall that will not hold it. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. 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. The sill caps the upstand before anything else does.

A goods lift booked by the hour puts a clock on the whole delivery, so pieces go up in a planned order and nothing is handled twice. 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. That is agreed at template, not on fitting day. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Distance from tail lift to door is the whole risk here.

It is one of the three that come up most, though worktop replacement comes up more. Nothing changes between them: same template, same workshop, same installers. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Full height behind the hob is less for a tenant to scrub. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. Grout lines are the first thing to fail in a let.

A doorway partway along one wall breaks that side into two separate pieces, and two short pieces cost more between them than the single long one they replace. 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. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. 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 downstand sets the panel height, not the wall units. 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. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. 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.

Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. A long carry turns a light piece into an awkward one.

Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. A piece is never laid flat across a gap while it is moved, because that is how stone cracks unaided. The lift is only part of the route, and the corridor from the lobby to the flat door often holds a tighter turn than the car does. It is usually the full-height panels rather than the tops that will not make the turn, and that only shows up when they arrive. The panel is sized to the turn, not to the wall alone.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Old plaster built up over decades makes the scribing heavy, and that time has to be in the plan rather than found on the day. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Twenty millimetres of packing behind a panel is not a fix.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. A rated load sounds ample until three lengths of granite and two fitters are standing on it, so the stone goes up one piece at a time. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. It travels on edge, so the clearance is checked on edge.