Splashbacks and upstands in Wimbledon Park

Yes. Wimbledon Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW19. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Merton. A permit covering the street is permission to park rather than a space reserved on it, and on a full street the difference is the whole morning. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. These travel flat and get carried on edge, and both want room. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

Where the addition is single storey the ceiling follows a lean-to roof, so one side of the room loses height and a full-height panel has a sloping stop. 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. A reveal in a thick wall changes where the panel stops. A cill projecting forward of the plaster line pushes the back edge out, and the units then stand off the wall by that amount for the whole length. 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.

A fitted stair carpet is either lifted or covered, because grit trodden into it under work boots does more harm than the carry itself. 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. They stand upright in the van and stay upright until they are on the wall. Where the household has used up the visitor permits it gets for the year, the remaining options are a suspension or a paid bay and both belong on the quote. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Where the van has to move, the panels come in first.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop replacement. 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. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Sockets move on site far more often than plans do. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. 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.

Handles on opposing runs meet in the middle of the aisle, so a deep edge profile specified on both sides takes width out of the standing space twice over. 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. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Where the sill lands inside the height an upstand would occupy there is no upstand, and the stone either dies into the reveal or stops short of 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 obstruction sets the joint, not the wall. 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. Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it is. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Two attendances need two people to be in.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. Casement handles and stays swing down into the space above the worktop, so the clearance that counts is the one measured with the window open. It decides whether the run gets one continuous piece or a set of separate lengths with a joint at every obstruction. Height follows the sill, not the plan.

A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. Original quarry tiles survive under a later vinyl in many of these, and lifting the units off them shows how far the floor has fallen towards the garden end. A 100mm upstand bedded on silicone is the honest answer where the plaster bows, because it rides what a tall panel exposes. Blown plaster comes off before stone goes on.

The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. The carcasses stay put. Only the surface changes. Estate roads inside a controlled zone are sometimes managed privately rather than by the council, which changes who has to be asked. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. A panel carried past a live lane gets a second pair of hands.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Older houses put the boiler or the meter on one of the two walls, and whatever is boxed in around it sets the point where that run has to stop. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Corners get their own pieces.