Orchid_pixie, 1. Buy a heavy duty tiller, if you decide to try to cultivate your soil. Don't do what I did and get the "cheap" $188 model at Walmart. It will only leave you $188 poorer & shaking your fist at the sky as you realize you wasted your money on a puny tiller that got you nowhere (and which, to boot, is hard to start unless you have the upper body strength of a titan). 2. I too, love gardenias & have been trying to grow them, with varied success. So far I've killed 1 1/2 plants (I would say two, but I won't know if the last one is dead until it warms up & I can tell if there are any remaining signs of life). Of the plants that have survived my attempts to grow them, I currently have two indoor veitchii (one at home, one at work -- I'm conducting an experiment to see which lasts the longest before dying horribly, or preferably, which blooms first!) and four frost-proof gardenias that I bought at Pike's and planted outside in my front garden bed. As for the frost-proof, they seem to be doing okay, and given that you're in the northern part of GA, I would give those a try before buying some of the less cold-hardy varieties. However, whatever you decide to do, do yourself a favor first and read the suicidal gardenia thread I'm posting for you below. The first time I read it, I literally laughed so hard that I had tears streaming down my face. Enjoy and good luck! Here is a link that might be useful: Suicidal Gardenia

Your kitchen is wonderful. Is your table chrome? If it is, would you consider a brass and chrome mixture in your lights? Is that one pendant light where the table chandelier will hang? If you have sufficient lighting from the pot lights, I think I'd skip the island light and just do something wonderful over your table.

I noticed you have some arched doorways. Does your home have any particular style of architecture, like Spanish or mediterrean? If so, it would be nice to keep the style consistent throughout the house. If you’re game, I’ve love to see the front of the house to get a sense of what it looks like, and that could help direct our suggestions. Also, is this part of a larger room, like the bar end of the living room? If so, you might want to coordinate the fixture with that other part of the room so it feels like...one big room (which it is.) FWIW, the company Rejuvanation Hardware has a lot of nice light fixtures. I agree with the other person that you might want a semi-flush light fixture. (vs. a full-on chandelier). And...you may want to consider keeping all the finish materials consistent throughout the house. i.e. I have a 1940 bungalow and so I choose oil-rubbed bronze (ORB) for the the metal parts of lamp, door knobs, drawer pulls etc. This helps make the home feel more consistent compared to have antique gold in one room and ORB in another (and bonus: you can decide this once and it makes shopping easier in the future).

Can I talk you out of the java altogether? 😂 The windows in your home are allowed to vary in size, they can also vary in trim color, preferably by zone. I would argue you have two zones in that space, kitchen & kitchen adjacent. The center “kitchen” window will look much better if it recedes into the cabinetry, allowing visual focus to remain with the one star of the show, your counters. If you go java, that’s all anyone will see when they look at your space. If you want to keep the java in adjacent zones, go for it. Obviously, I’d go white all around.