Splashbacks and upstands in Woodside Park

Yes. Woodside Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N12. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. A visitor or a neighbour parked on the drive is a five-minute problem at eight in the morning and an hour-long one at eleven. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. A long carry turns a light piece into an awkward one. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

Arts and Crafts houses have deep eaves, low windows and inglenook recesses, so the kitchen has more corners and reveals than its floor area suggests. These runs are long and often include a range recess, so the splashback is nearly always more than one piece and the joint placement matters, put it in a corner or over a hob centre line, not randomly in the middle of a clear run. A bowed wall is what decides between an upstand and a panel. A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. 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 panel takes its height off the steel.

A side gate hung to open outward against a fence post is narrower in use than it measures, and lifting the gate off its hinges is usually the quickest win on the route. 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 come in last so nothing is carried past them. Where the front garden has been paved over completely the van stands close to the house, and the route in is still a standard front door. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Panels come across in one pass with the route already cleared.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop fabrication. 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. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. The cheap way to make eight kitchens look specified. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Wipe-down beats sealed grout on a turnaround.

Everything on an island is fed from underneath, extraction, a socket run, a hob and sometimes a waste, and each of them wants its hole before the top is bonded down. 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. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. 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. Upstands sit tight because both edges are cut. The range and extractor must be sited and the window cill finished before the template, as both fix the vertical limits of the splashback. A quartz sample left on the counter for a week under the actual kitchen lights settles more arguments than any showroom, and an owner is the only person in a position to do that. Full-height panels need the wall made good first, which is another trade and another timescale. Two attendances need two people to be in.

Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. The units stay where they are and only the surface changes. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. A short bay slot is when the tall pieces get damaged.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Where the garden is level and the back door is wide the pieces get staged outside on trestles and brought in one at a time as the fitters are ready for them. 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. Suction lifters take a panel where hands cannot get a grip.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. No money changes hands before the template. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Wide doors, generous rooms and somewhere to park mean the joins that go in are the ones we choose, not the ones the building forces. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Height off the units, not off the old tiles.

Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. Island units are rarely fixed to anything at first fix, so they get screwed to the floor and levelled against the perimeter run before the stone is measured at all. 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.