Quick answer: A kitchen island in NZ is limited by three things before style ever comes into it — the benchtop slab size, the support your overhang needs, and whether you can get water and power to the middle of the floor. Get those right and the design follows.
Almost every kitchen brief we receive in Auckland asks for an island. It’s the one piece of the kitchen people can picture before they can picture anything else: the bench everyone leans on, the spot the kids do homework at, the place the platters land when there are twelve people in the house.
What almost nobody asks about is what has to happen underneath it. An island isn’t a bench floating in the middle of a room. It’s a freestanding structure carrying a stone top that can weigh well over 100kg, fixed down to a floor, often with a waste pipe and a power circuit running to it, and built to hold that weight with nothing on three or four sides to lean against. The cabinetry, the benchtop and the services all have published limits, and those limits decide the island long before anyone picks a colour.
We build these in our own factory in Rosedale, so we see where the plan and the physical reality part company. It’s almost always the same three places. The island is drawn longer than the slab that has to cover it. The overhang for the stools is drawn deeper than the stone will span unsupported. And the sink or the hob gets drawn into the island without anyone pricing what it takes to get a waste pipe there.
This guide works through what a kitchen island actually takes to build in an Auckland home, using published figures from the people who make the materials and the rules that govern the trades who connect it. No inspiration board. Just the constraints, in the order they bite.
The Slab Decides Your Island Before the Designer Does
This one has nothing to do with your room, your budget or your taste, and it catches almost everyone. Engineered stone comes in fixed slab sizes, and your island can’t be longer than the slab without carrying a join.
Caesarstone publishes its dimensions on its New Zealand site. A standard slab is 1440mm wide by 3050mm long. The larger Jumbo and Grande format is 1640mm by 3270mm, with a stated tolerance of plus or minus 1.5%. Every colour is offered in 20mm thickness, and some of the Jumbo slabs are also available in 30mm. Not every colour comes in the bigger size, which matters more than it sounds: choosing the shade you love can quietly rule out the island length you wanted.
What that means for the length you can draw
Work backwards from 3050mm and you’ll see the problem. A 3-metre island in a standard-size colour sits right on the edge of the slab length, with nothing left for the saw kerf, the polish allowance or the tolerance. A 3.4m island in that same colour needs a join, full stop. In a Jumbo colour you get to roughly 3270mm before the same conversation starts.
Width behaves the same way. A 1440mm slab has to cover your cabinet depth plus any overhang plus the edge detail. Run a 900mm-deep island with a 400mm seating overhang and you’re at 1300mm before you’ve allowed for anything, which fits, but only just, and only in one orientation of the slab.
This is why the first question we ask about an island isn’t how big you want it. It’s which stone you want. The answer changes what’s available.
💡 Design tip: If you’re set on an island longer than 3 metres, choose your benchtop colour before you finalise the cabinetry layout. Ask specifically whether that colour is available in the Jumbo or Grande format, and in 20mm or 30mm. It’s a two-minute question that can save a join.
Joins aren’t a defect, but they have rules
A join isn’t a failure. Plenty of large Auckland kitchens have one and nobody notices. But the placement isn’t a free choice. Caesarstone’s own technical guidance recommends joins at every change of direction in the benchtop, and requires that the distance between a cut-out and an edge or a join must be no less than 60mm, with the note that greater is better. If that distance falls below 150mm, the area has to be supported, and the space between the cut-out and the join must sit over the junction between the base cabinets.
Read that again with a sink in mind. You can’t drop a big undermount sink wherever you like on a jointed island top and expect the fabricator to work around it. The sink position, the join position and the cabinet positions all have to agree with each other, which is exactly the sort of thing that gets sorted in a factory drawing and not on site.
The weight you have to build for
Caesarstone publishes a slab weight of 45 to 47 kilograms per square metre at 20mm thickness, and lists a standard slab at 198 to 206kg. Do the arithmetic on a modest island: a 2.4m by 1.0m top is 2.4 square metres, so somewhere near 110kg of stone before anyone puts a bowl of fruit on it, or leans on the end of it, or a toddler climbs it.
That weight has to go somewhere. In a kitchen against a wall it partly does. In an island there’s no wall, which is the whole reason the next two sections exist. If you want the wider cost picture on the stone itself, our guide to kitchen benchtop costs breaks down the per-square-metre numbers by material.
What a Kitchen Island Overhang Actually Needs Underneath It
The seating overhang is the single most requested feature on an island and the one most often drawn without a support strategy. Caesarstone publishes an overhang table, and it’s the clearest answer in the whole category.
| 20mm slab (or 40mm laminated) | 30mm slab | Support required |
|---|---|---|
| Less than 300mm overhang | Less than 400mm overhang | No additional support required |
| 300mm to 500mm | 400mm to 600mm | Support brackets at 600mm intervals |
| Greater than 500mm | Greater than 600mm | Legs, columns or panels |
Caesarstone is explicit that these are approximate guidelines, that the permitted overhang has to be determined by a professional, and that it depends on the length-to-width ratio of the surface relative to the overhang, and on whether the overhang is supported on one or more sides by a wall or another fixture. It also states plainly that if the overhang will be subject to high loads, supports are necessary regardless of the table.
Why 300mm is the number to remember
Three hundred millimetres of unsupported 20mm stone is not a lot of knee room. It’s enough for a perching stool and a coffee. It is not enough for four people eating dinner with their legs under the bench, which is what most people picture when they say breakfast bar.
So you have three honest options, and they cost different amounts. Go to a 30mm slab and buy yourself another 100mm of unsupported reach. Laminate the edge so the top reads as 40mm, which Caesarstone lists in the same column as the 20mm figures and which also gives you the chunky edge look that’s been popular in Auckland for a few years now. Or accept the brackets, columns or panels, and design them so they look deliberate rather than apologetic.
💡 Design tip: If you want proper seating, plan for a support from the start rather than treating it as a compromise. A full end panel in the same finish as the cabinetry reads as part of the design. A steel bracket bolted on at the last minute reads as a fix.
Floating and cantilever islands are a different build
The floating island, where the top appears to hover with a recessed base or a dramatic cantilever, is having a long moment. It’s achievable. It’s just not a cabinetry job on its own. Caesarstone’s guidance is direct: slabs must be installed flat on a rigid frame or base that cannot bend or flex, and cantilever islands should be constructed from a steel frame capable of supporting the full weight of the slab, negating any movement or sagging.
Steel means a fabricator, a delivery, and a coordination step between the steel and the cabinetry that has to happen at drawing stage. It isn’t expensive relative to the rest of the kitchen, but it is a line item, and a quote that shows a floating island with no framing allowance is a quote with a hole in it. That’s the kind of gap worth hunting for when you’re comparing kitchen quotes side by side.
The three details people actually notice
Everything above is structural, and none of it is what a visitor sees. Three visible decisions do most of the aesthetic work on an island, and two of them are decided by the same choices that govern the overhang.
The first is the edge profile. Caesarstone supplies slabs with a standard engineered cut and the edge is then shaped by the stonemason, in thicknesses from 20mm to 40mm or more. Its published profile options run from Pencil Round and Aris through Bevelled Laminated, Double Laminated, Shadowline, Mitred Apron, Shark Nose and Splayed, with the caveat that not every edge is available in every area. There’s a practical rule buried in the same guidance worth knowing before you pick the sharpest-looking option: the top and bottom of edges must be rounded, all edges should carry a minimum radius of 3mm to 4mm, and the larger the radius, the more resistant the edge is to chipping. A square arris on a busy family island is the edge most likely to take a hit.
The second is the waterfall end, where the stone turns down the side of the island to the floor. It’s the detail that makes an island read as a single object rather than a bench on a box. It also costs real money, because it adds slab area and mitre work, and that area comes out of the same sheet that has to cover your top.
The third is contrast. Islands are where most Auckland kitchens break from a single finish, usually with a darker or timber-look island against lighter perimeter cabinetry. Because the island is a freestanding object rather than a run of doors, a contrasting Melteca or Laminex finish reads as deliberate here in a way it often doesn’t on a wall. Our guide to Laminex NZ kitchen cabinets covers what’s available in the current range.
💡 Design tip: Look at edge profiles on a real slab, not a render. A 20mm pencil round and a 40mm double-laminated edge change the whole weight of an island, and they photograph almost identically.
“The overhang question always arrives late, usually after the stools have been bought. Ask it first. The depth you want under the bench decides your slab thickness, your edge detail and whether you need a panel, and all three of those change the price.”
— Little Giant Interiors Design Team
An Island Carcass Is a Structure, Not a Box
Cabinets against a wall get help. The wall takes some of the load, the scribe hides the out-of-square, and the fixings go into studs. An island gets none of that, which is why the carcass has to be built to a different standard.
Caesarstone’s installation guidance sets out what the cabinetry underneath has to do. Surfaces are installed on top of cabinets and are not fixed to the wall. Cabinets must be complete, stable, level, and suitable for bearing the weight of the surface plus any other heavy applied loading, including full sinks. The surface requires a sturdy, weight-supporting perimeter frame or a full deck of solid carcass support. Support has to be provided under all benchtop joins, and side-to-side support beams are required under the surface for cut-outs longer than 600mm, which covers essentially every sink and every cooktop.
Rails, not just panels
The guidance goes further on rails. Any carcass a benchtop sits on must be able to carry the weight of the top plus normal daily load, so vertical rails are recommended, ideally vinyl-wrapped solid timber, giving full perimeter support at the front and back of every carcass. The rail must not flex or sag regardless of span. For carcasses with large spans, the front rail in particular needs to be built from rigid material, and a double-laminated timber rail or one made from aluminium or steel may be necessary.
That’s a meaningful specification difference from a run of standard base cabinets, and it’s invisible once the top goes on. It’s also one of the things we’d point to when people ask why two kitchen quotes for the same drawing can be thousands apart. One of them has built the island properly.
Fixed to the floor, and level everywhere
Caesarstone’s guidance calls plinths best practice, and requires that they be levelled properly and secured to the floor and wall, with cabinets fixed securely so there’s no movement under load and the surface sits level. In practice this is where old Auckland houses make themselves known. A villa or bungalow floor in Grey Lynn or Mt Eden has often moved over a century, and a 3-metre island run across it will find every hollow. Levelling that out is packing, scribing and time. It’s real work, and it happens before a single door goes on.
This is the part of an island where making your own cabinetry stops being a marketing line and starts being useful. Everything for our islands is cut, edged and assembled in our 700m² factory in Rosedale on German machinery, so rail specification, panel thickness and the support layout under a sink or hob are drawing decisions rather than site improvisations. If you want the fuller picture of that process, we’ve written about how custom kitchen cabinets are made from board to install.
Important note: Anything that involves altering the floor structure of your home, cutting into a slab, or touching a load-bearing or bracing element is outside cabinetry work and needs advice from a Licensed Building Practitioner and, where relevant, Auckland Council. Ask before you commit to a layout that moves structure.
Sink, Hob and Power: the Services That Decide Your Budget
Ask an Auckland homeowner what an island costs and they’ll usually quote you the cabinetry and the stone. The services are what actually separates a $6,000 island from a $20,000 one, and they’re regulated work carried out by licensed trades, not something the cabinetmaker can absorb.
Putting the sink in the island
A sink in an island needs a water supply, a waste, and a vent path, all arriving in the middle of the floor. The Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board sets out plainly what a homeowner may and may not do here. You can install appliances such as dishwashers and washing machines, and replace or repair taps, ball cocks and plugs. You cannot undertake any work involved in fixing or unfixing any pipe, plumbing fixture or appliance, including any trap, waste or soil pipe, ventilation pipe or overflow pipe, and any pipe that supplies or is intended to supply water.
The Board also notes that sanitary plumbing must comply with the Building Code, and where a building consent is required, the work has to be checked by a building inspector from your local council before a code compliance certificate can be issued. So the sink-in-the-island decision is a licensed trade decision with a possible consent layer attached, and your council is the authority on whether your particular job needs one.
How hard it is depends entirely on your floor. A timber floor with a decent subfloor in a bungalow in Epsom or Devonport gives a plumber somewhere to run pipework. A concrete slab, which is what most Auckland townhouses and newer homes in Hobsonville, Flat Bush and Albany are built on, means saw-cutting the slab and making good afterwards. Same sink, very different job.
Putting the hob in the island
A hob in an island brings its own chain of consequences. Induction hobs normally want a dedicated circuit, which your electrician will confirm against the appliance’s own installation requirements. Extraction has to come from above or below rather than from a wall. And the cut-out has to be supported. Caesarstone’s rules apply here too: a cut-out longer than 600mm needs a side-to-side support beam, distances to edges and joins have to be respected, and a board must be attached between the cabinet tops on both sides of under-bench appliances that generate heat.
There’s also a design cost people underestimate. The hob eats the middle of your island top, which is the exact surface you wanted for prep and for platters, and it puts the cooking mess on the side of the kitchen everyone can see.
Power in an island, and the socket rule almost nobody knows
Getting power to an island is prescribed electrical work in almost every case. Under the Electricity (Safety) Regulations 2010, regulation 57, the domestic wiring work an owner may do is a short and specific list: removing and replacing fuse links, connecting and disconnecting fixed-wired appliances, relocating existing switches, socket-outlets and lighting outlets supplied by tough plastic-sheathed cables, and removing and replacing certain fittings where the work does not involve a switchboard. Installing, extending or altering subcircuits is on the list too, but only if the person does not enter any enclosure where live conductors are likely to be present, and only if the work is tested and certified in accordance with Part 2 of AS/NZS 3000, before being connected to a power supply, by a person authorised to inspect mains work.
Regulation 57 also requires that any work done under the homeowner exemption be carried out and tested in accordance with ECP 51, the New Zealand Electrical Code of Practice for homeowner and occupier wiring work, published by WorkSafe. WorkSafe’s own consumer guidance is blunter: it does not recommend you do your own electrical work unless you have the necessary skills and knowledge.
Now the detail worth knowing before you fall in love with a pop-up power tower. ECP 51 states, in its guidance on installing socket-outlets: to prevent water and dust accumulating in the socket-outlet, do not mount socket-outlets in the floor or on any bench top or horizontal surface. That is homeowner-scope guidance rather than the rulebook your electrician works to, and there are purpose-made products designed for benchtop use. But it tells you something real about the risk, and it means the right move is to ask a registered electrician what they will actually install in your island top before you specify it. Ours is a simple house rule: put the sockets in the vertical face of the end panel or the return, where they stay dry, unless the electrician specifies otherwise.
💡 Design tip: Decide sink, hob and power before the cabinetry drawing is signed off, not after. Every one of them changes the internal layout of the island, and two of them change which trades need to be on site and in what order.
What a Kitchen Island Actually Holds
An island is usually sold on sociability and bought for storage. Both are fair, but they compete with each other, and it’s worth knowing the trade before you make it. Every millimetre you give to knee room is a millimetre you take away from the cabinet behind it.
Seating costs you a whole cabinet depth
Run the numbers on a 900mm-deep island. Give 400mm to a seating overhang and the cabinetry underneath is working with roughly 500mm of depth on that side, which is shallower than a standard base cabinet. In practice that usually means the island becomes single-sided: full-depth storage accessed from the kitchen side, and nothing but legs on the other.
Double-sided islands do exist and they’re genuinely useful, but they need depth. If you want storage from both faces you’re realistically looking at 1100mm or more of island depth, and now you’re back at the slab width conversation from earlier, because a 1440mm standard slab has to cover that plus the edges.
Drawers beat cupboards in an island, almost always
A cupboard in an island opens into a walkway and forces you to crouch and reach into a dark box. A drawer brings the contents out to you and doesn’t swing into the person standing behind you. For an island specifically, we’d put deep drawers ahead of doors nearly every time, and the hardware is the part that decides whether that’s still true in ten years.
Hardware is also where the warranty picture is clearest. Little Giant Interiors’ published guarantee schedule lists Blum hardware and Hettich hardware at lifetime warranty, Blanco sinks at lifetime, Caesarstone at 10 years, Laminex at 10 years, Melteca laminates at 7 years, and our own installation warranty at 5 years, with the guarantee transferable if you sell the house. Runners and hinges take more cycles in an island than anywhere else in the kitchen, so it’s worth knowing what’s actually behind them.
| Island depth | With a 300mm overhang | Realistic storage outcome |
|---|---|---|
| 700mm | 400mm of cabinetry | Shallow single-sided storage only |
| 900mm | 600mm of cabinetry | Full-depth drawers, one side |
| 1200mm | 900mm of cabinetry | Storage from both faces, if the slab allows |
The bin belongs in the island, and it needs planning
If the sink is in the island, the bin should be too, directly under or beside it. If the sink is on the wall run and the bin is in the island, you’ve just built a two-metre walk into every food prep session. It sounds small. It’s the single most common complaint we hear about islands that were designed around a photograph.
Storage planning is the same discipline whether it’s an island or a wall run, and if you’re working with a tight footprint our small kitchen design guide covers the layouts that earn their space.
What a Kitchen Island Costs to Build in Auckland
We’re not going to publish a single number for what an island costs, because there isn’t one. An island is not a product, it’s an assembly, and the range between the cheapest honest version and the expensive one is enormous. What we can do is show you the components, using our own published Auckland figures, so you can build the estimate yourself.
Start with the benchtop, because it’s usually the biggest single line
Our published Auckland benchtop guide puts engineered stone at $720 to $2,000 per square metre installed, with most Little Giant Interiors quotes landing between $1,200 and $1,800 per square metre depending on slab grade. Those are installed prices, and templating, edge work and installation account for a large share of the total, which is why materials-only comparisons mislead.
Take a 2.4m by 1.0m island. That’s 2.4 square metres of top. At the middle of our range you’re looking at roughly $2,900 to $4,300 for the benchtop alone, before you add a laminated edge, a waterfall end, or a sink cut-out. A waterfall end is not a small extra, either: it adds the stone for the return plus the mitre work, and it eats slab area that has to come out of the same sheet.
Then the cabinetry, priced by door finish
Door finish is one of the biggest variables in cabinetry cost. Our published figures put melamine at $60 to $110 per door, vinyl-wrapped thermoform at $90 to $140, polyurethane at $140 to $200 or more, and timber veneer at $160 to $240 or more, on a supply-only basis with installation additional. An island with drawer fronts on one side and a finished panel on the other has fewer fronts than you’d think, so this is often not where the money goes.
Then the parts people forget to price
- Finished end panels and a finished back. Every visible face of an island has to be finished, and on a wall run those faces don’t exist. This is the most commonly missed line in an island quote.
- Overhang support. Brackets, columns or panels, per the table earlier. Or a thicker slab, or a laminated edge, which shifts the cost into the stone instead.
- Steel framing if the island is cantilevered or floating.
- Plumbing to bring water and waste to the middle of the room, and considerably more if the floor is a concrete slab.
- Electrical for the hob circuit, any sockets, and pendant lighting above.
- Flooring make-good where the old kitchen used to be, and where the new island now sits.
💡 Design tip: When you compare quotes, look specifically for finished end panels, overhang support and the plumbing and electrical allowances. A quote that’s suspiciously cheap on an island is usually a quote that has priced a run of base cabinets and left the island-specific items to be discovered later.
For a fuller breakdown of what drives cabinetry pricing across a whole kitchen, our guide to kitchen cabinet cost NZ goes line by line, and the finance page sets out the payment options if you’d rather spread it.
Auckland Houses and Where Kitchen Islands Go Wrong
The same island behaves differently depending on what it’s sitting in. Auckland’s housing stock is unusually varied for a single city, and the island conversation changes street by street.
Villas and bungalows
Character homes in Ponsonby, Grey Lynn, Mt Eden and Herne Bay usually have generous ceiling heights and awkward kitchen footprints, because the kitchen was originally a small back room. The island often only becomes possible once a wall comes out, and that’s the moment the project stops being a cabinetry job. Removing an internal wall can involve a load-bearing or bracing element, which is a Licensed Building Practitioner and Auckland Council question, not a cabinetmaker question. Get that answered before you design anything around the result.
Timber floors in these homes are also rarely flat after a century of settling, which brings you back to levelling, packing and scribing. Worth budgeting time for, not just money.
1970s and 1980s brick-and-tile
Homes in Pakuranga, Howick and Manurewa from this era often have a kitchen that’s a defined room with a doorway rather than an open-plan space. An island fits, but only if the traffic route through the room still works with it there. This is where clearance dimensions matter most, and our sister brand Superior Renovations has published a detailed kitchen planning measurements guide covering island dimensions and walkway clearances for NZ homes.
Townhouses and newer builds
The Auckland townhouse boom has produced thousands of homes in Hobsonville, Flat Bush, New Lynn and Mt Roskill with open-plan ground floors and concrete slab foundations. Open plan makes the island look obvious. The slab makes any plumbing or electrical run to the middle of that floor a saw-cutting job. If the island was plumbed in the original build, you’re sorted. If it isn’t, moving services is a bigger conversation than the drawing suggests.
Apartments
Apartment kitchens in the CBD, Takapuna and the central fringe carry a body corporate layer on top of everything else. Changes affecting common property, services or waterproofing usually need approval, and there are often rules about working hours and lift access for deliveries that affect how a slab of close to 200kg gets upstairs. Check the body corporate rules before you design, not after. We’ve covered the tighter footprints in more detail in our guide to apartment kitchen renovation in Auckland.
How We Build an Island at Little Giant Interiors
Every island we make follows the same six steps as any other project: consultation, estimate, custom design, materials and manufacturing, installation, handover. What changes for an island is what gets decided at each step, and how early.
The measure and the questions we ask
A designer comes to your home, measures the room, and asks the questions that decide the island: is there a sink or hob in it, do you want seating and for how many people, what’s the floor made of, and which benchtop are you drawn to. That last one is not a decorating question. It sets your maximum length. You’ll get a free preliminary 3D design after the consultation so you can see the island in the room before you commit to anything.
The drawing that the factory actually builds from
The support layout under the island, the rail specification, the panel positions relative to the sink cut-out, the overhang strategy, the steel if there’s a cantilever, and the socket locations all get resolved on the drawing. That’s the whole point of drawing before building. It’s also why we draw, build and fit the island as part of one kitchen, out of one factory rather than sub-contracting the cabinetry and hoping the pieces agree on site.
Manufacture and install
Everything is cut, edged and assembled at Rosedale on German machinery, then delivered and installed by our own team. The benchtop is templated after the cabinetry is in and levelled, which is the only way to get a stone top that fits a real room rather than a drawing of one. Caesarstone’s guidance is worth repeating to anyone else on site after handover: no tradesperson should use a new benchtop as a workbench, a step or a standing platform.
“The islands that work are the ones where the sink, the seating and the storage were decided together. The ones that disappoint are the ones where each was added on its own and the last one to arrive had to fit around the others.”
— Little Giant Interiors Design Team
Questions worth asking any cabinetmaker about an island
- Is my benchtop colour available in the size my island needs, and will there be a join?
- What’s the overhang depth, and what’s holding it up?
- How is the carcass supported under the sink or hob cut-out?
- Are the finished end panels and the finished back included in this price?
- Who’s doing the plumbing and the electrical, and are those allowances in the quote or excluded?
- Is the island fixed to the floor, and how is it levelled?
If a quote can’t answer those six, it isn’t finished yet. And if the answers change once work starts, you’ll be paying for the change.
The Island You Can Have Is Decided Early
The romantic version of an island is a bench in the middle of a room. The real version is a slab of a known size, a specified overhang with something under it, a carcass built to take the weight, and services arriving through the floor from licensed trades. Every one of those has a published limit, and every one of them is cheaper to resolve on a drawing than on site.
Bring us the room and the way you actually cook, and we’ll tell you what will fit before you fall in love with something that won’t.
➡ Book your free in-home design consultation with Little Giant Interiors
➡ See our 6-step design and build process
➡ Learn more about our custom kitchens in Auckland
Kitchen Island NZ: Frequently Asked Questions
How big can a kitchen island be in NZ before it needs a join?
It depends on your benchtop. Caesarstone publishes a standard slab at 1440mm by 3050mm and a Jumbo or Grande slab at 1640mm by 3270mm, both with a stated tolerance of plus or minus 1.5 percent. An island longer than the slab in your chosen colour will carry a join. Not every colour is offered in the larger size, so confirm slab availability for your specific colour before you finalise the island length.
How much overhang can a kitchen island have without support?
Caesarstone publishes approximate guidelines. For a 20mm slab or a 40mm laminated edge, less than 300mm of overhang needs no additional support, 300 to 500mm needs support brackets at 600mm intervals, and more than 500mm needs legs, columns or panels. For a 30mm slab those figures become 400mm and 400 to 600mm. Caesarstone states the permitted overhang must be determined by a professional and that high loads require support regardless.
How much does a kitchen island cost in Auckland?
There is no single figure, because an island is an assembly rather than a product. Little Giant Interiors publishes engineered stone benchtops at 720 to 2,000 dollars per square metre installed, with most of our quotes landing between 1,200 and 1,800 dollars per square metre. On a 2.4 by 1.0 metre island that is roughly 2,900 to 4,300 dollars for the top alone, before cabinetry, finished end panels, overhang support, plumbing and electrical.
Can I put a sink in my kitchen island?
Yes, but the pipework is licensed work. The Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board states that a homeowner cannot fix or unfix any pipe, plumbing fixture or appliance, including any trap, waste or soil pipe, ventilation pipe or overflow pipe, or any pipe supplying water. The Board also notes sanitary plumbing must comply with the Building Code and, where a consent is required, be checked by a council building inspector. Cost depends heavily on whether your floor is timber or a concrete slab.
Can I put power points in my kitchen island benchtop?
Ask a registered electrician before you specify it. ECP 51, the New Zealand Electrical Code of Practice for homeowner wiring work published by WorkSafe, instructs that socket-outlets should not be mounted in the floor or on any bench top or horizontal surface, to prevent water and dust accumulating in them. Purpose-made benchtop products do exist, so the practical answer is to have your electrician specify what they will install. Sockets in the vertical face of an end panel are a simple alternative.
Do I need a steel frame for a floating or cantilever island?
Caesarstone states that slabs must be installed flat on a rigid frame or base that cannot bend or flex, and that cantilever islands should be constructed from a steel frame capable of supporting the full weight of the slab, negating any movement or sagging. That means a steel fabrication step coordinated with the cabinetry at drawing stage. If a quote shows a floating island with no framing allowance, ask where that cost sits.
How much does a kitchen island weigh?
Caesarstone publishes a slab weight of 45 to 47 kilograms per square metre at 20mm thickness, and lists a full standard slab at 198 to 206 kilograms. A 2.4 by 1.0 metre island top is around 110 kilograms of stone before anything is placed on it or anyone leans on it. That weight is why island cabinetry needs a weight-supporting perimeter frame or full deck support and has to be fixed securely to the floor.
How deep should a kitchen island be if I want seating?
Work back from the overhang. A 900mm deep island with a 400mm seating overhang leaves around 500mm of cabinetry depth, which is shallower than a standard base cabinet, so the island becomes single-sided. If you want storage accessible from both faces you are realistically looking at 1100mm or more of depth, which then has to fit within your benchtop slab width including edges.
Do I need building consent to add a kitchen island in Auckland?
Cabinetry itself generally does not, but the work around it can. Removing an internal wall to make room may involve a load-bearing or bracing element, and plumbing changes may need a consent and a council building inspection before a code compliance certificate can be issued. Those are questions for a Licensed Building Practitioner and Auckland Council. Confirm before you design the layout around the outcome.
What warranty comes with a Little Giant Interiors kitchen island?
Our published guarantee schedule lists Blum and Hettich hardware at lifetime warranty, Blanco sinks at lifetime, Caesarstone at 10 years, Laminex at 10 years, Melteca laminates at 7 years, PrimePanels at 7 years, Bestwood at 5 years, our installation warranty at 5 years and electrical workmanship at 12 months. The guarantee is transferable to the new owners if you sell the house. Manufacturer terms and conditions apply to the supplier warranties.
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References
- Caesarstone New Zealand — Design and Specification (slab dimensions, thickness and weight)
- Caesarstone New Zealand — Installing Caesarstone (Design Guide: overhangs, cantilever islands, carcass and cut-out support, joins)
- Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board — Advice for Consumers
- Electricity (Safety) Regulations 2010, regulation 57 — Exemption for domestic electrical wiring work
- WorkSafe New Zealand — Doing your own electrical work
- WorkSafe New Zealand — NZECP 51:2004, Electrical Code of Practice for Homeowner/Occupier Electrical Wiring Work
