Splashbacks and upstands in Welling

Yes. Welling is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are DA16. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bexley. Having the van on the drive means the load can be staged, so the heavy pieces come off last and go straight in instead of standing outside. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Distance from tail lift to door is the whole risk here. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

The scullery floor was quarry tile bedded on concrete and it is often still under a laminate, sitting lower than the boards in the room it now joins. 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. Old plaster rarely gives you a flat metre. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. 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 sill caps the upstand before anything else does.

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. 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 dropped kerb wide enough for a car is not always wide enough for a long-wheelbase van, and the width of the crossing decides the rest. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. A long carry turns a light piece into an awkward one.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. The extension electrician finishes after the drawing did. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Upstands turn batch offcuts into finished rooms.

An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. 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 stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. 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 downstand sets the panel height, not the wall units. The old tiling must be off and the wall made good and dry before templating, not on fitting day. Where two people share the decision it helps to know early which of them is settling the edge profile and which is settling the budget, because it is rarely the same person for both. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Two budgets, settled before anything is cut.

Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. A shallow bay or a squared-off rear window means the run beneath it is rarely the same depth at both ends. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Making the wall good first is cheaper than working around it.

A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. 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. 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. A door frame catches a tall panel long before a short one.

Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. The classic arrangement is the original back room with a later extension bolted onto it, so the kitchen is two ages of building in one room. That leaves a ragged band right where the upstand has to sit, which is fine for a 100mm upstand that covers it, but a full-height splashback needs the wall made good first or it will rock on the high spots. The wall gets made good first or the gap shows.

The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. Behind the boxing it becomes two pieces.