Splashbacks and upstands in Waterloo

Yes. Waterloo is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE1. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. A long carry turns a light piece into an awkward one. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

There is no back addition on these, so the kitchen is the original rear room and the run is one wall long with a door at each end of it. A 100mm upstand bedded on silicone is the honest answer where the plaster bows, because it rides what a tall panel exposes. What the wall can take decides how tall the stone goes. 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. Upstands sit tight because both edges are cut.

A carpeted hall runs a trolley badly, so a heavy piece is carried rather than rolled from the threshold in. 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. They stand upright in the van and stay upright until they are on the wall. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Panels come across in one pass with the route already cleared.

It is on the short list of three for this patch, with worktop replacement first. Same template, same workshop, same fitters whichever it is. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Sockets move on site far more often than plans do. 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. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. The extension electrician finishes after the drawing did.

A run that stops in mid-air at the open end needs a finished end rather than a cut one, and that end takes the same edge work as the whole front. 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. Height is agreed before the cut list closes. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

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. A breast return is scribed on three edges. 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. Consent for the work sits with the freeholder or the managing body, and getting it in writing first avoids a crew arriving to a locked door. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Whoever specifies it signs the drawing.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Original quarry tile is often still down under two or three later floor coverings, which is why the finished floor height is rarely what anyone expects. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Behind the hob is where full height earns its cost.

The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. That rear wall carries the back door and the only window, which leaves very little uninterrupted length for a sink run. A full-height panel in a chimney recess is templated as a trapezium, since that recess is square in neither direction. Old walls lean back, and a tall panel shows it.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. Ground floors fall away towards the garden across the whole footprint, so the units are packed up long before anything is measured for stone. Splashbacks come off the same slab run as the tops, which means the decision has to be made before fabrication starts. Panel joints land over a unit line, never mid-span.

A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. Where a run finishes hard against a wall the last few millimetres are scribed, and where it finishes in open floor it is cut square and polished, which is two different jobs on one length. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Joint placement is a decision, not an accident.