Gneegirl - Chill babe... it's all good !!! HA! ;-) This is NOT a problem AT ALL - here's what needs to happen: 1. Determine what the thickness of your stone is - 2CM or 3CM? 2. Have a sample piece 4" x 4" on hand for your electrician to use when he comes over to your home to re-set the depths of the outlet boxes. This (IMHO) should NOT be a new experience for EITHER your Electrician OR your Fabricator.... 3. Have your Electrician re-set the depths of the outlet and switch boxes.... (this should be done without the outlet recptacles and/or switches and trim plates in the boxes when he does this - just the wires should be sticking out with the protective wire nuts on each wire to prevent getting a shocking experience) ...so that that the finished stone will extend past the outside edge of each box when it is set by about an 1/8" - this means that prior to the splashes coming, your outlet boxes will protrude from the walls by the thickness of the stone PLUS an eigth of an inch. (the extra 1/8" will alow for adhesive to set the slab pieces to the walls) AND ... NO WALLS ARE PERFECTLY PLUM AND STRAIGHT, so allow for some variation - 1/8" should be enough, BUT - you may need to go 1/4" - this depends on your walls - if they are really flat, true and plumb or if they are "ca-ca"..... HOWEVER -AND THIS IS ALSO VERY IMPORTANT: IF your walls are nice and flat, you could have the boxes set so that they are flush with the stone - WITHOUT the extra 1/8" too - this will all depend on how wacky your walls are...make sense??? Ask your Fabricator to get involved on this if you have trouble.... 4. Check your walls with a 6 or 8 foot straight edge to be sure.. you may have really wacky walls, and in that case, you should (again) have your Fabricator check them (hopefully, he already did) This is something that I go over in detail with all of my customers that receive full height slab splashes, so they don't get all freaked out over something like this - it's really not a big deal at all - they (your Fabricator) should have gone over it with you already (IMHO).... Any ways............... Once the full height backsplashes are installed, your Electrician will be able to install the outlets & switches without much wailing or mashing of teeth... HA! ;-) Problem Solved !!!!! Hope that helps kevin Kevin M. Padden MIA SFA Fabricator, Trainer & Consultant to the Natural Stone Industry www.azschoolofrock.com

I use boxes that have the adjustable depth screw. They are Carlon boxes which are mounted with a metal bracket on the face of the stud instead of the nail-on style that attaches to the side of the stud. These work great and offer over an inch of depth adjustability. These would work perfect for you since all you need to do is cut out the outlet box hole plus remove the sheetrock where the bracket needs to mount on the face of the stud. No need to patch the hole for the bracket since the backsplash will cover it up. You can get these at Home Depot. Box extension will work too, but I prefer these boxes.

Just a follow-up to my previous message. While we're on the subject of outlets in the backsplash, I think it's important to think about outlet placement at this point. Perhaps you've already done this, but in case you haven't, my advice is to install your outlets horizontally, and as close to the backsplash as Code will allow. That way, the outlets will not disrupt the design and aesthetic of your backsplash as much as if they were installed higher and/or vertically. Also, if the outlets are lower and horizontal, you can put things in front of them to hide them, like coffee maker, paper towel holder, and the like. My electrician was obsessed with Code. In my area, Code stipulates a minimum distance from the counter to the center of the outlet of 4", so that's what the electrician did. VERY happy with that placement. Not only are they mostly hidden by coffeemaker, etc., but there are no dangling cords that would have been seen if the outlets were higher placed. (Note: the outlet pictured in not GFCI because it's across the kitchen from any water source. The outlets on the other side of my kitchen are all GFCI)

I think that what you have going on in terms of plugs has a lot to do with HOW you have your kitchen set up. For us, we plan on having only one thing continually plugged in on the countertop - and therefore, we put a low, horizontal plug in that area. The rest of our area is plugmold because we won't be keeping anything else permanently on the counter and plugged in. We will have an appliance "garage" that will house the coffee pot and other consistently used small appliances. My KA mixer has it's own cabinet and a plug inside the cabinet. Like everything else here, when planning your kitchen, it's important to ask yourself what you are hoping to accomplish and what way you are going to use your kitchen. If you are the type that will have various appliances out and plugged in all the time, then certainly, it doesn't make much sense to have plugmold and see the appliance colds dangling down. But, if you have an appliance garage and/or you are the type that will have small appliances out just when being used, you may be happy considering plugmold. We're also concealing the kitchen sink light switch and the UC light switch under one of our upper cabinets as well so that they won't show on the backsplash. Oh, and we will have plugmold on our island also - it will mount underneath the granite. I had considered one of the Mockett systems - they are pretty cool, but I felt that it was more intrusive than what I wanted for our small island...if there winds up being an issue with it and we wanted to get rid of it at some point down the road, we didn't want that large hole in our granite.