Splashbacks and upstands in Yeading

Yes. Yeading is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are UB4. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hillingdon. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. That is why they are crated the way they are. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

The kitchen has a door to the hall, a door to the garden and a window over the sink, so the continuous run is short in every direction. 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. Blown plaster comes off before stone goes on. 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. 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. A bowed wall shows on a panel and hides under an upstand.

Counting hands matters more than counting metres on a staircase, because a piece two people lift off a van still wants three on the flight and a fourth watching the trailing corner. 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 door frame catches a tall panel long before a short one. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. Long panels and long carries do not mix.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, 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. A managed portfolio tends to repeat one specification across every flat, which keeps later repairs and replacements simple to order. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Upstands turn batch offcuts into finished rooms. Damage in a let flat is settled as a deposit deduction, so a surface that can be repaired in place is worth more than one that has to be replaced whole. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. The cheap way to make eight kitchens look specified.

A mitred corner is cut and dressed as a matched pair, and if either leg shifts by a millimetre on site the joint opens along its whole length rather than at one end. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. The hob panel is sized after the extractor, not before. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted 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. 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. Mitred returns come from one place in the slab. 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. Where the provider has set the specification the material choice was made once for a great many kitchens, and the useful work is meeting it exactly rather than proposing something else on the day. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. The wall has to be ready.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. The units stay where they are and only the surface changes. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. Full-height panels are the awkward thing to move, light enough to lift and long enough to flex on the way. Off the van last, and never in a hurry.

If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. 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. The pier takes a joint against it, not across it.

What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. A mitred external return around it has to come from the same position in the slab, or the pattern visibly steps at the corner. A window board below worktop height ends the upstand argument.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. Suction lifters earn their keep on a straight flight and become a liability on a winder, where a handle standing out from the face is one more thing to catch on a wall. 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. Joint positions follow from that.