Splashbacks and upstands in Tollington

Yes. Tollington is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N4, N7. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Islington. Where the nearest legal space is a couple of streets back, the walk with each piece becomes the job, and the crew is sized for walking rather than wheeling. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Two hands and a clear route, or it waits on the van. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

The chimney breast has almost always been taken out of the kitchen with the stack left standing above it, so that bay of wall is newer plasterwork on a different plane. 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. Blown plaster comes off before stone goes on. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. 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 panel takes its height off the steel.

A meter cupboard set into the hall wall narrows the run at exactly the height a carried piece travels. 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. What can be got into the room decides the height above the worktop. Applying for a suspension means naming a length of kerb and a date, and moving the date generally means applying for it again. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. The longer the walk, the fewer the panels per trip.

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. Four kitchens ordered together take one template visit and one delivery, and that is where the saving comes from rather than from a discount on the stone. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. One damaged panel, one twin already on the shelf. Rooms in a shared house are let individually, so the work has to be done around whoever is still living in the building. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Sockets move on site far more often than plans do.

One leg of an L is nearly always the working run and the other little more than a landing space, but both are templated, cut and edged to the same standard. 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 supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. 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. Upstands sit tight because both edges are cut. 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. Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. 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.

An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. Ceilings are high in these, so wall unit heights and splashback heights are open choices rather than things the room has already decided. A 100mm upstand bedded on silicone is the honest answer where the plaster bows, because it rides what a tall panel exposes. The wall build-up sets the depth of the return.

Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. 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 breast return is scribed on three edges.

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. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. Set it proud on a subframe and the gap becomes deliberate.

A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. 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.