Splashbacks and upstands in Wapping

Yes. Wapping is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E1W. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Tower Hamlets. Camera enforcement gives nobody the chance to explain, where an officer on foot at least sees a tail lift down and stone coming off it. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. A narrow gap between parked cars decides how a panel turns. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Ceilings are high and there are usually no wall units, so a splashback runs to whatever height is decided rather than to a cupboard. Exposed brick is the defining issue: the face is uneven by 10mm or more across a bay, so a stone splashback either scribes to it, which means the back of the panel has to be relieved, or it is deliberately set proud on a subframe with a shadow reveal all round. What the plaster is stuck to matters more than its colour. A deep scribe comes out of the nest, so how far the stone has to be relieved changes which part of the slab the piece is cut from. 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. Mitred returns come from one place in the slab.

Hoisting is planned at quote stage or not at all, because the crew, the equipment and the permissions are three separate bookings. 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. A door frame catches a tall panel long before a short one. Where a loading concession applies at all, it holds only while something is being carried, which makes it a way to unload rather than a way to park. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. These travel flat and get carried on edge, and both want room.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication and worktop installation. That is the local housing talking rather than anything about the job. It is priced, cut and fitted no differently here than anywhere else we cover. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. A repeated spec needs a repeatable splashback. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. One damaged panel, one twin already on the shelf.

The offcut taken out of the middle for a hob is a large usable piece, and it is worth deciding early whether it becomes an upstand or goes in the skip. 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. A peninsula end takes a panel on both faces. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

A downstand over a run caps wall unit height before it caps anything else, and the splashback then takes its height from the steel rather than from the units. 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. The pier takes a joint against it, not across it. Decide and build the backing method, scribe, subframe or board, before the template, because the templater is measuring to that face and not to the brick. A let property is specified for durability and for a fixed window, and both of those are legitimate reasons to choose differently. Full-height panels need the wall made good first, which is another trade and another timescale. Two budgets, settled before anything is cut.

A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. 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. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Encased steel is always bigger than the steel inside it, so the casing is what gets plotted, and a casing is rarely square to the wall it sits against. 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. A window board below worktop height ends the upstand argument.

Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. A brick pier standing into the run divides it in two, and the join goes against the pier where a clear wall would have needed no join at all. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. Full height wants a flat wall behind it.

Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Windows are large industrial openings with deep sills, and a run finishing at one meets a reveal a full brick deep. Setting the panel proud on a subframe with a shadow gap reads as a detail; scribing to raw brick rarely does. A reveal in a thick wall changes where the panel stops.

Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. If a hoist is the only way in then the piece sizes are designed around the opening, and the sash or casement usually has to come out first. 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. Joint positions follow from that.