Splashbacks and upstands in Tooting

Yes. Tooting is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW17. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Wandsworth. Plenty of zones run at the weekend as well as through the week, so a Saturday date is not automatically the easier one to work. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Two hands and a clear route, or it waits on the van. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

The ground floor is a solid slab with a bitumen membrane and no void under it, so services either run on the surface or get chased into something hard. The rear kitchen wall in ex-council flats and maisonettes is commonly dense in-situ concrete or blockwork with a thin skim, which means mechanical fixings are hard work and the splashback is held on adhesive rather than screwed. Sockets in a stud wall move more easily than sockets in brick. Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. 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 window board below worktop height ends the upstand argument.

Pendant fittings over the stairwell and anything hung on the half-landing come down first, because a piece on edge sweeps a wider arc than the people carrying it. 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. A panel that would need turning indoors is turned outside instead. A permit covering the street is permission to park rather than a space reserved on it, and on a full street the difference is the whole morning. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. The longer the walk, the fewer the panels per trip.

Yes, one of the three we see most, with worktop replacement ahead of it. Same visit to template, same workshop, same installers on the day. A second kitchen or a kitchenette in an annexe is a small job with the same fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines as a large one. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Ordered together, or the match is luck. Where an annexe has been built or converted, its floor and its walls are newer than the main house and behave differently under the same run. 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.

A breakfast bar on the outer side is an overhang like any other, and the support under it is sized for people leaning on the end rather than for the weight of the stone alone. 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. Height is agreed before the cut list closes. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. 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. Full height wants a flat wall behind it. Any surface trunking or conduit has to be rerouted or accepted and boxed before templating, because the stone cannot be scribed around a live conduit on site. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. 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.

A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. A communal flight is out of use while a piece is on it, so the carry is timed so nobody is trying to pass on a half-landing. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. What can be got into the room decides the height above the worktop.

Nothing is payable in advance of the template. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. There is nearly always a boxed soil stack or a service riser in a corner of the run, and it is rarely mentioned at enquiry. Splashbacks come off the same slab run as the tops, which means the decision has to be made before fabrication starts. Panel joints land over a unit line, never mid-span.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. Each obstruction is another joint, and it is priced as one.

Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. The carry is the constraint: a single stair with tight half-landings, or deck access with a long walk from the lift. Socket positions, sill heights and wall flatness are the three things that settle this, and all three are properties of the building. Sockets move on paper more easily than in stone.