Thanks Caroline. I already have an asparagus fern growing in a wall hanger on the garden shed. Bought a couple Blue Daze (Evolvulus glomeratus) today to replace the Boston fern. I'd forgotten what a neat plant that was. Hopefully it'll be happier than the Boston fern was.

The last picture in the first post is probably the best picture I can get of the wall with the misplaced sconces - the one that has to move is open hole, with blue tape to the left of it where it was supposed to be. The other is behind one of the chandy lights at this angle. Unfortunately, once I saw the room with furniture in it, I realized that a picture hanging b/t the sconces would also be obscured by the chandy (unless maybe you're sitting at the table). I'll try to stand at the foot of the table tomorrow and take another picture so you can see both sconce locations. I can't believe I never caught this on the plans! Question is not could I move the sconce, but should I? Since I compounded the builder's error by laying the floor in a pattern centered on the room, should I leave the sconces centered and move the chandy (whenever we repaint the ceilings - maybe a medallion would hide the current hole and we could move it now?), which would mean moving the table closer to the windows than it is to the china cabinet, and maybe even moving the small buffet server to b/t the windows since it is the same depth as the china cabinet? That would just make it harder to move around the table and pull out chairs, since the room is only 13 ft wide. Thank you for the compliments on my great-grandmother. Now we know where we all got our blue eyes from (except DD - she got some hazel combo from my blue and DH's green)!

I would reverse the two..let the couch wrap into the corner under the window, and move the loveseat into the room, with the back to the island, facing the wall it's now on. Put a pin-up swing-arm lamp on the long wall behind the angled part of the sofa to give you light in the corner. Put a low table along the wall the couch is now on, long enough to fill the space between the edge of the sofa and the side of the loveseat (under the long window, facing the fireplace), which will serve as a side table for both the short end of the couch and the loveseat, Put a nice big lamp on it. Hang a big mirror on the wall over the sofa (where the loveseat is now), and put a slender floor lamp beside it (on the right, as you look at the first photo). Add a modest-sized, slender-legged glass-topped coffee table in the middle. You will then have a conversation area organized around the fireplace, warm lighting for the area, and a sense that the room is its own space. If I am seeing the photos correctly, you will have enough room to walk around behind the loveseat. If you have another 9" or so, put a long low bookcase behind the loveseat, facing the tile surface I see in the foregraound, to anchor it, perhaps to give you room for your cookbooks, and to provide another surface in the shared space between the family room and kitchen peninsula.

I have a similar problem for the area over my buffet. I wanted to hang a framed piece but thought the flanking buffet lamps would be partially blocking the painting. The designer said that the lamp shades SHOULD overlap the framed piece partially so that they relate to each other. Otherwise the painting is just hanging there. Try to look through magazines and you'll see that the lamps and other objects on tables frequently go into the space of what's hanging above. Just my two cents--or my designer's.