This article appeared first as a readers question about new home kitchen design in the Irish Examiner newspaper in August, 2025.
Q. Hi Kieran
We recently got planning permission for our new home. When should we get into the kitchen design to stay ahead of the contractor?
Thanks
Jane
Clonmel
A. Hi Jane
Thank you for this great question. Congratulations on receiving planning permission for your new home, it must be so exciting! All these months of designing and waiting and now finally a positive result. I hope you also have taken some time to get advice on costs at this point as this is another mission critical piece of information. In relation to your question, you would be forgiven for thinking that a kitchen would not need to be designed until later in your project to facilitate the timely arrival of the finished units at the end, once the plastering is completed and once the tiles are laid in the kitchen space but this is far from the case. To begin with, let’s look at how a kitchen design plays into spatial design and then we can look at how a kitchen’s plumbing requirements affect the construction foundation process.
In my experience, a kitchen design can in fact play a very early part in the final design of a new home or indeed a renovation. When a kitchen designer (or interior designer) looks at a kitchen they will often look to adjust the assumed kitchen design in place in your planning drawings. In truth, this is often a basic kitchen design the architect has in place; it works generally but it has not been fully considered in terms of what cupboard space you will need, what gets stored where, the triangulation you need in terms of sink, cooker and fridge and so on.
A kitchen designer will look at your planning drawings and look at the exact space you need to accommodate all your cooking, storage, seating and general working and circulation day to day. This will set out all your cupboards, presses, larders, islands, worktops and appliances, in line with typical kitchen framing sizes (more expensive kitchens can run off bespoke sizes, lower end kitchens will be fixed to a few size blocks).
When the kitchen design is complete and all boxes ticked, it is compared to what your architect has allowed for in your plans. It may be the case that a window needs to be adjusted or an internal door or wall needs to be tweaked. If this is the case, these changes need to be made and sent to your engineer so that they can be allowed for in your construction (final) drawings and sent to your builder.
When the builder eventually starts on site, the first thing they will do is to scrape off the soil and an amount of subsoil down to the level of the underside of your ground floor slab foundation. Then they dig out for the foundations of your external and internal blockwork walls. Next they install concrete and steel and then the underground blockwork (deadwork) to and an amount of hardcore inside the external wall deadwork to begin the process of building up the layers of hardcore to the underside of your new ground floor slab. The biggest plumbing elements the builder needs to be aware of now are any big pipes underground that need to fall away from the building towards the edges. These are typically your drain pipes. These will be required for your ground floor WC’s and indeed, you will have smaller diameter waste pipes for your sinks and dishwashers. You will also have hot and cold pipes leading to these wet elements and it may be that you need a gas pipe to your hob. If you are putting your sink or hob on the island, a duct needs to be installed from the island to a nearby external wall of your house to contain electrical wires and perhaps a gas pipe if needed for a gas stove. One other key consideration here is that many modern kitchen designs now require a sizable pipe to be installed underground for your hob extractor. If this is so in your design, this would also be installed at this time.
The builder first will fit the largest pipes (sewer and extraction) and set them in a little concrete to hold them in place locally and they will need to engage with the plumber to fit the remainder of the pipes. Once all the pipes are fitted and the insulation is in place, the plumber can next fit all the underfloor heating coils. The important consideration here is to keep your underfloor heating away from any kitchen cupboard to avoid heating the cupboard themselves. In particular it is good practice to avoid heating pipes in a larder to keep this area cool for food storage. Again your finalised kitchen design will facilitate this.
Now that all the key pipework is in place the next element that the builder is preparing for is to pour your ground floor slab concrete. This is generally done in one pour and when in place, no other changes can be made to the ground floor services as they will literally be cast in stone. One word of caution here; not everyone wants them but if you are considering any floor sockets for lamps, then now is the time. The last thing you want to do is try and cut though the finished concrete and underfloor heating to fit these later. You have been warned.
Kieran McCarthy is a building engineer and director of KMC Homes bespoke A-Rated new home builder, serving Cork and Limerick. He is also presenter of a new RTE tv show showcasing deep retrofits in Irish homes due out later this year.
Follow Kieran on instagram @kierankmc for more home building information, tips and Q&A advice.
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