Thank you so much, echoflooring. You were absolutely right! We went back to the carpet store to get comfortable on all this before finalizing the order, and I figured I'd circle back for the benefit of anyone in the future who looks at this question. We went back and compared the carpet we chose to the "true friezes" and "true saxonies" they had. This Essential Living is something Karastan calls a "textured saxony." Fiber is much, much thicker, and considerable looser than a real saxony. Unlike the saxony, you can't make lasting footprints (or draw smiley faces as my son did), in the Essential Living carpet. About the same texture as the friezes, just a teeny bit longer and a little bit looser, and a bit softer. It's not as long as I remember it, and carpet vendor says they've had lots of experience putting it on stairs with no wear or safety issues. With his guidance we did scale the padding on the stairs back to a dense, thinner, pretty unyielding felt that should reduce concerns about too much padding/curve on stair treads. Thanks so much for all your help!

I would want the island light as close as possible to the back of the sink cabinet and the start of the overhang. Do you see a direct, straight-on view of the hood from anywhere? Even if it was centered, no one would be able to tell if it is or not when looking from any angle. The undercabinet lights might take care of your other problems, but if I were starting from scratch, I'd have one over the spot where the 2 counters meet to the right of the stove (centered approx 21" from each wall)...Then have one the same distance from the center of your hood on the other side, the same 21" distance from the back wall. It seems like having them 3 ft from the wall in front of your fridge and pantry is a good idea. The lights in your hood should be enough for the stove top.

Good point, bbtrix, but relying on the pendants isn't a big deal to us. We're re-using the existing pendants with 75 W halogen bulbs (will likely switch to LED when they burn out). They put out a lot of light. We started out with 100 W halogen to replace 100 W incandescent and they were waaay too bright. Anyhoo, I prefer a mix of lighting from cans, UCL and pendants and the ability to use all or only some of them, depending on what's going on in the kitchen. And dimmers for all, of course. I just talked to my KD. She had designed the cans to be 54" OC (wasn't marked on my plan so I forgot this) so moving those 2 cans to the other side of the joist is only about 3" beyond that, putting their final location closer to her plan than their current placement of 48" OC. We can get away with slightly wider placement between cans because we have 9' ceilings. I'd forgotten about that when I was stressing over this yesterday. = ) I'm happy with this decision. I really didn't like having the 4" and 6" cans so close together in that one spot, plus I know for sure that moving the bottom can out a few inches will definitely provide light to that side cab. It's because of "the wall is open, this is in the way, what do you want to do, we need to know now" situations that I planned and planned and planned all the other details so I'd have to make as few on-the-spot decisions as possible. So far, so good (thank you, thank you, kitchen remodel gods!). ... I've read this sentence several times and can't quite fathom your concern: "At this point though, it looks like the cans by the range are the concern." Is it because it's not centered on the hood? Or for another reason? But to answer your question, I am ok with it, as is hubby. I thought he'd have a problem with it because it's not centered on hood (he can be a little OCD about that kind of stuff) but he's not bothered by it in the least. My new kitchen will be lighted better than my current kitchen, which is lighted better than it was when built 21 yrs ago, simply because we switched from incandescent to halogen bulbs. When I think back to how poorly lit all my childhood kitchens were.... My grandmother's kitchen had a light over the sink, a light over the range and a central ceiling light for a room that was 18'-20' square. How on earth did we never slice off a finger while making a meal?

Thanks, David, but I figured this out thanks to advice from my KD. We moved the 2 cans to the other side of the joist. She had designed them to be 54" OC (9' ceilings, forgot that part of the formula when I was stressing yesterday) and in their new location, they'll be 57" OC. Close enough for the remodeling game. If we run into a similar situation for another room, I will definitely keep disc lights in mind.