Splashbacks and upstands in Wood Green

Yes. Wood Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N22. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Haringey. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. 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 measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

Steel windows sit in narrow reveals with a slim cill, which leaves almost no depth for an upstand to return into. Mansion block kitchens are full of boxed-in soil stacks, gas risers and heating pipework, and the boxing is usually plywood or plasterboard that stops short of the ceiling, so the splashback run gets broken up by returns rather than running clean wall to wall. The age of the plaster decides the fixing, not the finish. 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. 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 reveal decides where the stone dies.

The lift has to be booked and blanketed before anything moves, and that booking needs to cover the old tops coming out as well as the new stone going 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. A tall panel cannot be tilted to clear a turn, so it is sized not to need to. Where the bay sits some distance from the core, the carry across the car park is the longest leg of the day and gets boarded and lit. 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 really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. The person choosing the worktop is not the person using it, and that shifts the balance from appearance towards running cost. 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. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Upstands turn batch offcuts into finished rooms.

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. Joint placement is a decision, not an accident. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

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. 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. A bowed wall shows on a panel and hides under an upstand. The riser boxing must be finished in its final form and any access panel positions agreed before the template, since the stone is set out around them. One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. Full-height panels need the wall made good first, which is another trade and another timescale. Two attendances need two people to be in.

The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Floors are solid concrete under a screed, so nothing is packed by driving a fixing in and everything is packed by shimming. Splashbacks come off the same slab run as the tops, which means the decision has to be made before fabrication starts. A chimney breast breaks a panel run regardless of the drawing.

The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. Where the lift will not take the longest run we design a join in rather than gamble, because a piece that will not go up has to go back on the van. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. Panels are carried on edge from the tail lift to the wall.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. This is a logistics job before it is a stone job, and the lift car is usually the single biggest constraint on the design. Socket positions, sill heights and wall flatness are the three things that settle this, and all three are properties of the building. Boxed pipework decides the panel width before taste does.

Supply through us runs £110 to £550 per square metre for the slab alone, which is the line you would be removing. Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. The cheap way to make eight kitchens look specified.