Splashbacks and upstands in New Cross Gate

Yes. New Cross Gate is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE14. It is run from the New Malden side, covering South West London & Surrey. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. 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.

Deck access means a long open walkway from the lift or the stair to the front door, and that walk happens with the piece on edge in whatever weather there is. That suits a full-height piece, because a large flat panel bonded across its back is more stable on concrete than a run of small tiles ever was. Decided before fabrication starts. Small lifts and deck walkways make jointed pieces normal — design the joint into the run rather than apologising for it later.

Estate layouts with parking courts, deck access and small lifts, and the retail park and main road restricting where a van can wait; most flats are walk-up or served by a single lift. Piece length is set by the internal diagonal of the lift car, not by the length of the slab. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. 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.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop fabrication and worktop templating. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Siliconed to the worktop, never grouted. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. 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. 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. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over 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. Make the wall good first, or accept the detail. 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. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. Splashbacks are cut from the same slab run as the tops, so they have to be decided before fabrication, not after. The wall has to be ready.