Splashbacks and upstands in Westcombe Park

Yes. Westcombe Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE3, SE10. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Greenwich. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. One trip is always better than three. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The bay at the front and the back addition at the rear were built to different standards, and the kitchen is nearly always in the weaker of the two. Lath-and-plaster on the party wall and the chimney breast returns almost never runs true, so a 100mm upstand bedded on silicone is the honest answer here, it rides the bow and hides the junction the worktop can never close on its own. The wall makes that decision, not the brochure. This is island country, pieces are big and heavy, so check the floor structure and whether the route round the side of the house beats the hallway.

Mostly straightforward: wide front paths, off-street parking on a fair number of plots and gently sloping roads down toward the railway, though streets nearest the station fill with commuter parking through the day. Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. It decides panel size before anything is cut.

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 design & quotation. 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. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Same batch, same run, same day. 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. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Siliconed to the worktop, never grouted.

On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. 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. Joint placement is a decision, not an accident. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. 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. Scribed, dubbed out, or set proud. Pick one. 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. 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. Splashbacks are cut from the same slab run as the tops, so they have to be decided before fabrication, not after. Decided before fabrication, not after.