Yes – and many of our customers do! In fact, a lot of people say that this is one of the best, most attractive and most practical features of their new kitchen, especially when the windowsill is “fully sealed” with an upstand completely filling the gap underneath it down to the worktop. This allows for cleaning/wiping down (which may be frequent if you have herbs or other pot plants on the sill) to be easily done with no smears onto paint work, and with the same cleaning treatment on all horizontal surfaces.
An installation of Cimstone Arcadia quartz worktops, showing the use of 20mm thick material to form 100mm upstands, window sill and splashback at the hob. In this case the height of the windowsill exactly coincides with the standard upstand, making for a continuous upstand run around the room.
A Black Pearl granite installation with a sill at the standard upstand height.
Black Galaxy Granite, with a bespoke upstand higher than the standard 100mm upstand. The sill has slight “horns” to either side. The customer considered having a higher upstand throughout the room, but this might have been over dominant in look, and would have run into all the power sockets and other electrical fittings.
An installation in Blue Pearl granite showing a bespoke upstand a little higher than standard. The sill itself has been made without horns.
Installation in Salt and Pepper Granite, with a top-mounted sink. The windowsill is lower than the standard 100mm upstand, to the point that fitting an upstand at this height throughout the kitchen would look quite wrong and would not be practical for wiping down etc.
Detail of the Salt and Pepper installation, showing the continuation of the upstand into the window reveal. If a customer is looking for this type of work it should be raised on templating, although the work itself to cut and shape the upstands will be done on site by the fitters.
Can you make a windowsill to my measurements?
Granite Windowsills can be a great way to finish the kitchen, and we always have several offcuts of stone that are suitable. Do remember that granite and quartz have batch and block variation so you may not be able to exactly match any existing stone.
Items such as windowsills are usually more cost-effective to collect from our workshop in Charlwood rather than paying for delivery, and can fit into the back of most estate cars.
Plaster around windowsills makes most sills not a perfect rectangle, so unless you want to scribe the plaster then we would normally need to make them as an irregular quadrilateral. We can make sills to a wooden or plastic template that you supply, however, we can also make them to your measurements.
To measure a windowsill you will need a square edge and a tape measure. Start by marking a line square to the window roughly in the centre. Then carefully measure from this line to the left and right at the front and at the rear, and note these measurements on a diagram such as below (use millimetres please). Then measure the depth from the window to the front of the wall on the left and right – Add on to each of these depths the overhang you require
- Typically if there are no upstands below the sill then you would add 10 to 20mm
- If there is an upstand below, you would add 30mm to overhang the upstand by 10mm.
Make a note of the depth of this visible return, as this will need to be polished along with the front edge. Finally you need to specify the profile for the front corners, normally this is a squared off edge.