Splashbacks and upstands in Streatham Vale

Yes. Streatham Vale is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW16. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. Where the drive is shared, the half-hour the van spends in the way is agreed with the neighbour in advance rather than apologised for at the time. 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. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

The boiler has usually been moved out to the garage or the utility, leaving a capped flue and a run of dead pipework in the kitchen wall. These kitchens are nearly always retiled at least twice, and stripping the old tiles takes the bottom course of plaster with it because the original laminate top ran underneath the tiles rather than up to them. What the wall can take decides how tall the stone goes. A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. 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 step up to a patio or a raised threshold at the back door means the piece is lifted rather than rolled, and that is where the crew size gets decided. 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. Upstands make almost any turn a worktop will not. A step up from the drive to the threshold turns the last two metres into a lift, and a lift is where two pairs of hands become the minimum. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Nothing this long gets walked while a warden is circling.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop replacement. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. 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. 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. 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. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. A repeated spec needs a repeatable splashback.

An L can be mitred at the corner for a continuous look or butt-jointed over the gable, and the two are different money and different risk. 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. Every internal corner is two pieces, not one. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. 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 downstand sets the panel height, not the wall units. The old tiling must be off and the wall made good and dry before templating, not on fitting day. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Upstand height taken from the specification.

Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. Behind the boxing it becomes two pieces.

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. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. The original plan put a larder and a back door on the same wall, and both leave awkward stubs once the room is opened up. Splashbacks come off the same slab run as the tops, which means the decision has to be made before fabrication starts. A chimney breast breaks a panel run regardless of the drawing.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Air bricks that once ventilated the original floor now open into the extension, and one of them is generally sitting behind a base unit. The ragged band left when old tiles and laminate come off together is what usually decides upstand over full height. Old walls lean back, and a tall panel shows it.

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 return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Long walls break where the worktop breaks.