Splashbacks and upstands in Underhill

Yes. Underhill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EN5. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. Drives with a dropped kerb and a tight turn-in take a long van at an angle, and that angle decides which side the tail lift can work from. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. The crate stays on the van until the route in is clear. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A radiator sits under the rear window on the outside wall, and moving it is plumbing that belongs before the template rather than after it. 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. A bowed wall is what decides between an upstand and a panel. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. 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. A window board below worktop height ends the upstand argument.

Piece length is set by the internal diagonal of the lift car, not by the length of the slab. 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. Where the drive is too short for the van the back end overhangs the footway, and a footway is a route people are using rather than spare space. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Distance from tail lift to door is the whole risk here.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. 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. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. 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.

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. 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. Long walls break where the worktop breaks. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. 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. Full height wants a flat wall behind it. The old tiling must be off and the wall made good and dry before templating, not on fitting day. A leaseholder paying for their own kitchen inside managed stock still needs the freeholder to consent, and that consent is about the building and the common parts rather than about the worktop. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. An owner can wait for it; a void period cannot.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. These kitchens have usually been retiled twice and knocked through once, and both of those leave marks the worktop has to deal with. Splashbacks come off the same slab run as the tops, which means the decision has to be made before fabrication starts. Boxed pipework decides the panel width before taste does.

The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. 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. Each obstruction is another joint, and it is priced as one.

A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. A mitred corner is cut and dressed as a matched pair, and if either leg shifts by a millimetre on site the joint opens along its whole length rather than at one end. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Upstands follow the return round the corner.

Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. A car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a three-metre worktop however it is stood, and there is no trimming it on the landing. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. It travels on edge, so the clearance is checked on edge.