Yes.

Yes, it is illegal. But it depends on whether you are being inspected or not as to whether you get caught.....

When I opened up my walls I found all sorts of junction boxes behind the walls that I never knew existed. We left some of them and just put up drywall because we were doing it ourselves and didn't have permits. To get rid of the junction boxes would have required pulling new wires through plaster walls. I decided just putting them back how they were behind the walls was the lesser of the evils. I'm sure a real electrician would have been obligated to do differently.

If you are OK with saying "Maybe we shouldn't have broken the #1 rule of electrical work" while standing in the pile of burnt out rubble that used to be your house, by all means, go for it.

Ant
I don't know if you needed a permit - that depends on your definition of "sprucing up" Most municipalities require a permit for "kitchen renovation"

Tiling over existing outlets is asking for trouble!
While it may seem like a lot of outlets in a small expanse -before you use "idiot" describing something/someone - You may want to be informed of what current code requires for electrical outlets in the kitchen:

et rules: There must be a least two dedicated circuits for the kitchen appliance outlets. They must all be GFCI protected. They must be 20 amp breaker protected--size 12 wire. If any counter is wider than 12 inches, it must have an outlet. An island, and peninsula, must have a least one outlet no lower than 12 inches from the top, and no counter may stick out more than 6 inches over the outlet area. No spot on the counter, measured at the backsplash, may be more than 24 inches from an outlet--openings such as the sink and oven start a new measureing point from their outside edge.

Depending on the layout that 10' spanse may be 1 outlet short of being up to code!

Further
That is a major code violation to leave live energized wires inside a wall. There must be a box and it must have an accessible cover or the wires must be disconnected at the source and cut off so they can not be engerized.

If your house burns down and are lucky enough to get out and you needed a permit for kitchen work, didn't pull one & the violation is found - covering a live electrical box (it will be trust me) - You will not be covered by homeowners insurance

Just ask yourself if it is worth the ongoing risk

Let me clarify. the 4 outlets were all on a dedicated 20amp breaker, we turned off that breaker, there was nothing else powered by it. There is no electricity going to those covered outlets. Since we disconnected one of the 20amp switches, we only have one working one for the remaining four outlets now. Is it possible to rewire two of the existing outlets to the 20amp switch we just disconnected?

There are no more outlets on that wall except for the microwave. There are four other counter height outlets and two of them are the ones with buttons.

I thought 8 counter height outlets above 17 linear feet of couter was overkill. thats less than two feet apart. even without the four on that wall, there are two directly ajacent from it on either side. (kitchen is a u shape) But from your information it seems we are out of code for not having one on that wall at all anymore.

Thank you for such sound information, we went about this backwards, shoulda coulda woulda asked before we covered.

I'd be happy to have that many outlets in my kitchen. We've got small appliances, a phone, rechargers, a computer, etc. My view is that it is impossible to have too many outlets in a room...particularly a kitchen.

really? I hated it, there were 2 outlets on either side of the stove that freaked me out all the time because they were so close. I was always worried something would splatter in them and the i try to use it and kaboom. They were literally like 3 inches away from the stove.

If you are OK with saying "Maybe we shouldn't have broken the #1 rule of electrical work" while standing in the pile of burnt out rubble that used to be your house, by all means, go for it.

I was going to say the same thing. God forbid there's a fire-- if your insurance inspector were to see that, nothing else would matter. You'd be on your own.

I have a contractor's license and yes I have tiled over outlets without a problem. However, that being said:

first of all, the circuit MUST be dead. You said it was turned off at the circuit breaker. that means it could be turned on again. The wires leading out of the breaker box must be cut off where they enter the breaker box to insure they can never be re-connected. Once this is done the circuits is officially dead and you can cover over the boxes without a problem. Alternately, you can cut off the wires leading out of the box immediately prior to the ones you want to cover.

So why the big fuss about this? Because you housed is always vibrating and things become disconnected. So you can have a box where the wires are sparking and getting overheated behind the tile. Or you can get a dead circuit and can't find the problem because the disconnect is behind your tile.

I am amazed you would be reducing the number of circuits in your kitchen. With all the appliances we have today, circuit overloads (many times resulting in fire) is a major concern. I have never heard of a fire starting from something getting splattered on an outlet. I have heard of many, MANY fires resulting from overloaded circuits.

Last of all, if you've already tiled over the outlets and have no intention of uncovering them, why did you bother to post?

Yikes. Seriously, do it over....

Boy, I'd be happy with 4 outlets on a 10' wall. When I'm cooking a big meal, there's never enough outlets. I would have made them double outlets instead of tiling over them. I sure hope you don't miss them.

If you have already covered them up, you can "fix" the problem simply by disconnecting the run before the outlets. This will disconnect anything past them too (if any). Any farther down the line would have to be re-routed.

If this line comes directly from the panel it's a very easy thing to do, and like mentioned above, cut the wires so there is no way they can be reconnected. If it is in a run, find the nearest live outlet and open in up (after shutting power of course) and disconnect the outgoing run and cut the wires so they can never be reconnected.

In our first house (built about 15 years before we bought it) we had a funny bow to the sheetrock behind the oven. We were doing some work above and when cutting the sheetrock found a wire heading in a direction there were no outlets. And since we have experience with this is didn't take much to realize the wires were going to a box that was sheetrocked over, even though the box was installed correctly to stick through the sheetrock - hence the bow in the wall.

We cut out the box and there were the live wires just coiled up in the box waiting to be hooked up - no tape or nuts or anything - just a cut live wire. We installed an outlet to fix the problem

On our current much older home, we found a covered up outlet with live wires behind the sheetrock repair in the old kitchen - this was very old wires (the black cloth type) and the ends had been taped but the tape was degraded to the point that it was not much good. This one we thought had been disconnected but we are always careful. DH got out his tester and sure enough - unshielded live wires there too. That one had probably been covered up for 30+ years.

Our house is now completely rewired, but we are rather amazed it did not burn down based on what we've found.

Cathy