Splashbacks and upstands in Wembley Park

Yes. Wembley Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are HA9. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Brent. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. 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. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

Kitchens are compact and standardised, which makes the fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines a larger share of the total than the stone. The rear kitchen wall in ex-council flats and maisonettes is commonly dense in-situ concrete or blockwork with a thin skim, which means mechanical fixings are hard work and the splashback is held on adhesive rather than screwed. A reveal in a thick wall changes where the panel stops. A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. 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. Nothing gets hidden behind a full-height panel.

Managed buildings allow deliveries through the lift only between set hours, and a day that overruns them finishes with the last piece still on the pavement. 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. It travels on edge, so the clearance is checked on edge. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. 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 particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop fabrication. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. New-build kitchens are usually smaller than the plan suggests once the appliances are in, so the usable run is shorter than the drawn run. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. A spare panel is cheaper now than next year. Buyers upgrading before handover work to a choices deadline set by the sales office rather than by the build programme. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. Reordered next year, it will not match.

The two runs are read against each other rather than against the floor, so they are set to one datum taken across the aisle instead of measured up from the boards. 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. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. 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. The reveal decides where the stone dies. Any surface trunking or conduit has to be rerouted or accepted and boxed before templating, because the stone cannot be scribed around a live conduit on site. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. 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.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. A bowed wall shows on a panel and hides under an upstand.

Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. A galley that is also the route to the back door is a corridor first and a kitchen second, and what the shape can take is set by the traffic going through it. 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.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Two runs of similar length nest as a pair off one slab, and if one of them grows by a few hundred millimetres the pair stops fitting and the yield changes for both. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. Corners get their own pieces.

An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. Entry-phone access, a booked lift and a parking bay near the entrance all have to be arranged before a date is confirmed. Dense concrete takes adhesive better than fixings, which actually suits a large bonded panel. Blown plaster comes off before stone goes on.