Lastly, I should mention that I'm not doing this work myself, there will be a licensed electrician involved, but I have to give the electrician a lighting plan this week. If I can't hang pendants from the beam, I'll either have to specify hanging them from the ceiling on either side (which DH thinks is doofy) or build out the beam creating a space in which to put in narrow recessed low voltage lights (which DH wants, but I think it'll make the beam look massive -- and hate it when he gets his way!) Anyway, thanks in advance for the electrical advice and any marital counseling you might choose to send my way!

Great thread! I wish I had that much space to work w/ in my kitchen! Mine is only 11 x 12'! I'm about to put a hanging pendant in front of our two side-by-side windows but we have a thick piece of wood between the windows so that helped me decide to just hang one there. The thing is, I don't know if I'll get one pendant or the shower kind that has an upside-down T shape w/ two lights hanging off of it. I thought it would be fun to have a light in front of each window instead of just one boring light, see? ;) So my instinct told ME anyway that it's preferable to have one light before each window. I do think since I have that extra space between the windows, that just one pendant would look nice too though. Below I'll include a pic of the area under the windows. The extra holes in the ceiling are just from when the electrician was feeding the wire through (they're not for any lights). The other light hanging in the main ceiling will go away and be replaced with something better suited (it's a 1913 house). Maybe a semi-flush mounted light (if that's the correct term) or maybe even the kind that has 3 shades hanging from showers, as long as I don't let it be too long. I live near both Schoolhouse and Rejuvenation House Parts (local co.) so it's fun to have so many choices, including real rewired antiques at some other stores! Here is a link that might be useful: Area where my pendant will go under the windows...

For the uplight, you could go a few routes, especially with respect to dimming functionality. And some fixtures don't support dimming, so you need to figure that out. To that end, I suggest you think through the use cases. For example, the use case that I think I'd appreciate most is late evening, after you've retired to another room of the house, at which time a mellow indirect glow from the skylight cutout would be particularly pleasant. You might also want the more light from this source on occasion, in which case you'd want brighter lights on a dimmer. That being said, here's some options. I'm thinking two, centered on the skylights, mounted near the bottom rim of the cutout (just above the beam probably). Regarding the pendant, I know that selecting pendants is hard enough without more to think about, but one downside of a single pendant vs multiple pendants is thhat single sources create worse shadows. And the clear glass pendants above exacerbate this harsh shadow problem by being point sources, whereas the Fillsta, for example, mitigates this problem because it's effectively a uniform 31" sphere of light. This large diffuser also makes it possible to use a brighter source. For example, you could put a 300W equivalent CFL in the Fillsta, but such a bright light would be unacceptably harsh in a point source like the clear glass pendants above.

David, If I had places to connect four or more orthagonal lines, I would do that. But the trees aren't well-situated for that, and I'm not sure about installing fee-standing poles. They might be a little too intrusive, visually. (If we went with slimmer metal poles, rather than redwood posts, they might not stand out as much. I may need to investigate how strong metal poles would have to be, and how I could get them fabricated.) The cantilevered umbrella system is a clever idea, but I think that would be too big and intrusive for what we have in mind. We have another outlet at the edge of the patio near the table. I suppose we could go with one of those under-umbrella lighting kits that would attach to the ribs of our existing market umbrella and run the cord from beneath the table to the outlet. We were hoping to have lighting that leaves the dining area open to the sky, but that may not be practical.