Your contractor is correct about needing the outlets, however, he is wrong about their placement. Your kitchen designer should have allowed for fillers for outlet placement, which I prefer over the Mockett style pop-ups.

Joseph, We may not be too late. The islands are not in yet. Where would the fillers be placed in a typical design? One of our islands will have a panel wood wall length of counter, the wall where the stools are placed. This wall will also have an outlet. That’s a total of 3 outlets for the counter island. Do we need outlets at the end of the islands, or can we have 2 only outlets at either end of the panel wall? Thanks again, Bertie

The island design must change and become larger, and then redo the counters. And not affect the required aisle clearances or other elements. Or different or altered island cabinets must be used, and keep the same size island, with internal changes to it configuration. Or you get a red tag, and can’t use or occupy the kitchen until all of that gets fixed.

This requires the participation of the cabinet supplier for parts, kitchen designer for design, electrician for input, and GC to coordinate. All of those have to put their heads together to kludge something in the face of 6 month lead times for cabinet parts. All because it was badly designed on the front end. Gosh knows how much other bad design exists if the very basics of code were ignored in the design.

You add a 3” filler to both ends of the island for the outlets. Kitchen design 101 is planning for outlets in islands

You need outlets where you use your countertop appliances. If possible, have the wood side of the island adapted for outlets. This can be done while the island is being built. Call your cabinet person today.

It would be nice to actully see the layout mostly becuase I hate double islands in kitchens they are not as functional as you might think I can't even enlarge the pics so no clue what yours are like. I do agree this was something needed in the original plan .

Thanks everyone. Honestly, we will probably never use the outlets. I like the waterfall look and now I’m finding out code requires we have outlets, which spoils the look. Why it wasn’t done in the design phase, I don’t know. It’s a standard builder design, we didn’t have any input.