Splashbacks and upstands in Tottenham Hale

Yes. Tottenham Hale is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N17. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Haringey. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Nothing this long gets walked while a warden is circling. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

Lime plaster over rubble moves in and out enough that a single long panel will show a gap somewhere along its length. These runs are long and often include a range recess, so the splashback is nearly always more than one piece and the joint placement matters, put it in a corner or over a hob centre line, not randomly in the middle of a clear run. A chimney breast breaks the run and the panels follow it. A partition that gives when you lean on it will give under someone sitting at an overhang, and a bonded mitre nearby is where that movement shows first. 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. Height follows the sill, not the plan.

A car will often hold more than its doors will admit, and it is the clear width between the door edges that a piece actually has to pass through. 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. The panel is sized to the turn, not to the wall alone. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. The crate stays on the van until the route in is clear.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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.

Older houses put the boiler or the meter on one of the two walls, and whatever is boxed in around it sets the point where that run has to stop. 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. Tall panels are what push a job into a second slab. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

Where a peninsula returns into a stud wall the load has to sit on the units, with the wall doing no more than steadying 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. Scribed along the top edge as well. The range and extractor must be sited and the window cill finished before the template, as both fix the vertical limits of the splashback. The decision usually gets made standing in the room rather than at a desk, which is why a slab is worth viewing whole instead of choosing from a sample card. Full-height panels need the wall made good first, which is another trade and another timescale. A second visit needs a second permission.

Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. Where the bay sits some distance from the core, the carry across the car park is the longest leg of the day and gets boarded and lit. Full-height panels are the awkward thing to move, light enough to lift and long enough to flex on the way. Distance from tail lift to door is the whole risk here.

Units have to be fitted, fixed and level before templating, and it is better to hear that at the template than on the fitting day. Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. A lightweight stud partition will not carry a breakfast bar or a peninsula end, and stone finds that out faster than laminate ever did. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. The obstruction breaks the length, every time.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. Nothing changes hands until after the template. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. There is usually a cellar head or a hatch somewhere in the floor, and whatever sits above it has to stay liftable. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Siliconed to the top, never grouted.

Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. The two runs are read against each other rather than against the floor, so they are set to one datum taken across the aisle instead of measured up from the boards. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. Height is agreed before the cut list closes.