Splashbacks and upstands in Wandsworth Town

Yes. Wandsworth Town is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW18. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Wandsworth. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. That is why they are crated the way they are. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A riverside block is a managed building with a booked goods lift, a loading bay and a concierge, and all three have to line up on the same day. The plasterboard is flat enough for a full-height panel; it is the socket positions that cause the trouble. The wall makes that decision, not the brochure. In open-plan riverside flats the peninsula end is seen from three sides, so a mitred waterfall with matched veining is usually specified and the joint quality is judged at eye level.

The gyratory and the retail traffic make timing critical, and the riverside blocks require booked loading bays with a hard time limit plus a lift with a stated capacity. Terraced streets off the main roads are permit-controlled all week. 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. Joint positions follow from that.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop fabrication and worktop replacement. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. Same batch, same run, same day. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Siliconed to the worktop, never grouted.

A peninsula is an island with one end tied to a run, which means the join between them has to be planned rather than allowed to happen. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Corners get their own pieces. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Dot-and-dab plasterboard sounds solid and is hollow behind, so anything fixed through it has to hit a dab or a batten rather than a void. 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. An upstand rides what a panel exposes. Any socket you intend to move must be moved and re-plastered before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece of stone. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. Full-height panels need the wall made good first, which is another trade and another timescale. The wall has to be ready.