Splashbacks and upstands in Dagenham Heathway

Yes. Dagenham Heathway is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM9, RM10. It is run from the Essex side, covering Essex & East London. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. Handling is where these pieces get damaged. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Rear access through a garden or a shared path means long pieces can usually come in whole from the back. 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. The wall makes that decision, not the brochure. Above the parade there is nowhere to stop legally for long, so slabs are offloaded fast onto a trolley and the van moves before we start the carry.

Residential side roads are easy, but the Heathway itself is a busy shopping street with loading restrictions and enforcement, and parade flats have no vehicle access to the door. The side passage is the measurement that matters, because a piece has to be carried flat down it and then turned in at the back door, and the turn is always tighter than the passage. 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. That is agreed at template, not on fitting day. Tell us what the approach looks like when you book the template and it gets built into the day rather than discovered on it.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. Same batch, same run, same day. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Sockets final before template.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. Corners get their own pieces. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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 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. Scribed, dubbed out, or set proud. Pick one. 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. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. Full-height panels need the wall made good first, which is another trade and another timescale. Decided before fabrication, not after.