The kids are all in bed nearby so I am trying sooo hard not to burst out laughing!

I don't think I have any words of wisdom for your lighting in your pot rack, but I've got to say I can totally relate to mocking things up. My whole family groans when I try yet another mock-up. Sometimes I think I'm no different than my girls playing house, only bigger. A friend who knows me well, said to me upon my explanation of playing with one set-up of a latest creation: "When aren't you playing with your environment?"

Hooray for mock-ups!

Thank you! I could use the good laugh and nice to see someone's kitchen that isn't much further along than mine! (plasters are
Redoing finish coat on the walls as I type and yes it's 8pm)

Brilliant idea. I am all about mockups too, making poor DH construct "furniture" from wood scraps! But this has anything I've done beat! Brilliant.

OMG.

Tonight I started building a mock-up of my roasting pan drawer. I'll finish tomorrow.

Wait, it gets better.

This weekend I built a scale model of my refrigerator wall. With doors that open. And shiny handles. I sent a pic to my sister and she thought it was full sized.

Dear Lord, what's wrong with us.

I love it, Rosy! And seriously, mock-ups are really instructive. There were a number of elements that I thought looked great on paper -- until I mocked them up. But I am preaching to the choir here!

This post was edited by Angie_DIY on Tue, Jan 15, 13 at 23:24

Awesome. Thank you for the visual.

I also do mock-ups all the time. I have to visualize it. Yours is pretty darn good. :)

I just saw this pot rack on Houzz at "Canary Cottage" (cough, I think our whole house might fit in the living room) and it made me think of your mop handle set-up. Without the light. : ) Looks like they did can lights to either side of it.

[

[Traditional Kitchen design[(https://www.houzz.com/photos/traditional-kitchen-ideas-phbr1-bp~t_709~s_2107) by Philadelphia Architect Archer & Buchanan Architecture, Ltd.

Here is a link that might be useful: Canary Cottage, about 1/2 way down the page

LOL - too funny - but soon!

laughable: That's a great image. That's the look I'm going for, a single rail pot rack that runs down the middle of the island. It won't hold every pot and pan I own, just the most used saucepans, saute pans, and frying pans.

I am trying to avoid can lights in this kitchen because I'm trying to recreating a vintage kitchen. I do have some neat old flush mount lights I could hang. But I really wanted a big light that would hang down and illuminate the island for pastry work like cake decorating, candy making, etc.

Oh, and you should have seen my country carpenter's face when he came in the next morning and saw that set up. I think he is constantly wondering, "how does she get him to do this stuff?" Well...Rosylady has her persuasions...

I needed that! Good thing I haven't had my glass of wine yet, it would have been all over the laptop between you and marcolo.

What about this? It's similar to the feeling you want. A little busy, but sometimes that translates to charming when it's done well.

alex9179: That's one of my inspiration pics! My pot rack will look almost exactly like that, except in un-lacquered brass.

Marcolo: we need a picture of that fridge wall mock-up. I can't believe you sent it to your sister and didn't show it to us. We care way more about that stuff than any IRL people!!

Rosy, I think putting the fixture(s) on either side is the way to go. You've run through potentials with your mock-up, but there is a very good chance of someone banging a pot into the shade of a fixture hung from the rack. That would be me, if I were lucky enough to be a guest. Enter mortification and feeling guilty about it forever, along with ruination of whatever was being prepared underneath.

I can't wait to see what you come up with for your rack. I love this look!

Rosy:
You need to learn Sketch-Up! That will help you immensely :)

That said, I don't think I could build a house without the mock-ups. Even with what I consider fairly good visual skills, the mock-ups are so important.

Don't forget about blowing up balloons in the exact diameter of pendant lights then hanging those at the exact height to get a full visual! I did that twice, including using balloons twisted together (balloon animal style) to get a large chandelier mocked up one time!

I call it ingenuity!

LOL!

I have been laughing my bummy off.
The thing is, I get it completely!
I'm not a pot rack fan, and my ceiling is way too short.
However, I like your mop. And that inspiration pic!

I'm looking forward to your finished product. AND, of course, the mock-ups in between!

Love the mockup! I like the single bar look. You are in good company..

Our kitchen remodel was part of our whole house rebuild and I spent way more time for the kitchen than the rest of the house. I mocked up each of the layout iterations with empty packing cartons and had a written script of use cases (morning breakfast rush, evening dinner with family, party with friends who like to help, family get togethers with family who does not help but likes to hover closeby, jam making session, summer outdoor party to test traffic from kitchen to courtyard, etc.) to test the layout. My DD loved it! DH was in awe at this side of me (he has never seen me in professional capacity) and occasionally thought I was nuts like when I measured 45deg angles to figure out if the ergonomic countertop height was 33 or 34 in. And when I did arm measurements for the main users of the kitchen to figure out the "mise en place". There was minor rebellion when I sought to measure the inverted V for ventilation(Kaseki is to blame)... from all 5 burners. We had props that we "borrowed" from real kitchen (cereal boxes, old knifes, dishes, furniture, printed labels). It came home to me when I was grocery shopping with a friend and the guy in the produce come over very excited and spoke to me in rapid Spanish and was pointing to the back. The assistant manager walked over and explained that he had saved empty cartons for me in the back alley :) oh and when the cabinets arrived, DD ran over excitedly announcing that the men are bringing the "real kitchen" :) If we are TKO in a public forum, then at home, you can only imagine..phew.. It was good to get this off the chest:)

The mock-up is perfect! From experience, I recommend having 2 lights flanking your rack. Our last house had zero cabinets, so we HAD to have a pot rack. It was large and fairly decorative, and fortunately it fit nicely between the 2 pendants that were already in the middle of the kitchen ceiling (with a small infant, we did NO remodeling when we moved into that house - whatever was there, we lived with).

The lights did throw weird shadows through the pots - both on the island surface and on the ceiling. I kind of liked it - we had plenty of cans above the perimeter cabs, so the overall lighting was fine.

That said, I LOVE your single bar idea - you only use 3-4 pots on a regular basis anyway. But, to take your mock-up one more step, I would recommend you simulate the actual light as well. It looks like maybe you don't have power to that space right now - perhaps you could hang a small lantern inside your light or use a 360-degree flashlight? (I'm picturing a compact LED camping lantern here.) You want to get a feel for how the light will fall on your work surface and how it will affect your ceiling, and decide how high or low all your elements need to be.

There's a fairly recent thread on pot racks. I'll see if I can find it.

Here is a link that might be useful: Pot racks

Just found another intriguing light that might be adaptable to a pot rack on Houzz:

[

[Traditional Kitchen design[(https://www.houzz.com/photos/traditional-kitchen-ideas-phbr1-bp~t_709~s_2107) by Charleston Architect Group 3