Splashbacks and upstands in Tufnell Park

Yes. Tufnell Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N7, NW5. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. Visitor permits are issued to the household rather than to the trade, so the ones the day needs come from the customer and are best in hand the week before. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. The longer the walk, the fewer the panels per trip. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

A basement is often reached by its own door under the front steps, and that door is smaller than anything else on the route. Lath-and-plaster on the party wall and the chimney breast returns almost never runs true, so a 100mm upstand bedded on silicone is the honest answer here, it rides the bow and hides the junction the worktop can never close on its own. Old plaster rarely gives you a flat metre. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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.

Sintered stone at 12mm changes what a staircase can take, because the same run arrives at roughly half the weight of the granite equivalent. 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. A bay suspension carries a fee and a notice period, and the notice period is the part that catches people out when a date moves. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. A narrow gap between parked cars decides how a panel turns.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Six kitchens, one socket layout, one panel drawing. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. 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.

Some of them overhang on two sides at once, and each side is worked out separately, because the load on an edge people lean against is not the load on an edge people walk past. 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. Socket cut-outs are machined, not chipped in on site. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. 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. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. 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.

Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. A breast return is scribed on three edges.

The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. Sash windows sit low in the rear wall, and the sill often lands below the height a worktop wants to run past. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. The extractor position is measured before the panel is drawn.

Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. A piece carried on edge up a flight has to clear the ceiling above the stairs as well as the walls either side of 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. They stand upright in the van and stay upright until they are on the wall.

Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Open-tread and cantilevered stairs give nothing to lean a piece against, so the whole weight stays on the crew for the full length of the flight. Panels travel on edge in a frame, and the frame needs the same clearance the finished piece does. A door frame catches a tall panel long before a short one.