Johnliu, point well made. However, when you have a small kitchen, the neat/tidy pot rack utilizes space that would otherwise be vacant. And it can look pretty darn good doing it too. It is just a very utilitarian accessory for a busy cook with limited storage space. LIDS are always an issue. I have several decorative metal plate racks which hold 4 plates each. Purchased from Mobile Fixture here in Alabama, and they are a restaurant and kitchen supply store. I was able to put some of my flatter lids into the plate slots, and now finding the right size lid for the job is not such a noisy problem. Here's my current pot rack and IKEA utinsel bar. I admit this is overkill and sloppy, but we are nibbling away at a kitchen redo, and everything has to be somewhere. And here is the current state of affairs in the back porch which will one day become part of the kitchen redo. Note on top of the left M/Wave where the orange enameled pan is, those are lids and racks in a wire plate rack, forget where that one came from. And then here is the regular metal plate rack used as a lid rack for the time being. When I redo the kitchen, a built-in table with a countertop will be installed adjacent to the range. IKEA makes the one I will buy if I cannot use the s/s topped piece you see under my current pot rack. I already threw out the old range, and we're now cooking on this Waring Pro 2-burner hotplate. It works for us. But you should see how my hubby's friends shake their heads when they learn I threw out the stove!!!

I do like the pulley too..maybe I can convince him to exchange the non working one. #4 I am afraid is on the small side but I have to go back and find the dimensions on it. just looks small to me. but i do like the nautical look it has. re. the table lighting. after spending the weekend there with ceiling fans in the adjacent room, I am really sorry we didn't just wire for a ceiling fan over the table. we wired for 2 drum/pendant type lights. I asked my husband if would want to change that out and he is not crazy abou the idea. the breeze in the family room is really nice, but the kitchen is still. still working on him. Otherwise i do like the woven or drum pendants. I was never crazy about a ceiling fan over a table but..here it would be very functional.

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.

@ RL - very good points re: cleaning. @groveraxle - goodness, I love your candor. Here's the thing. Those are knock-off Beat pendants and they're served me over the last 5 years but I'm ready for an update. They are also very low wattage so provide very little down lighting. I'm also SUPER fussy about finishes matching, and I'm doing chrome faucets and pulls. I don't like brushed + chrome look lol. I'm picky-picky. We have vaulted 16+ foot ceilings and the space feels large at over 20 feet long (even though the island breaks up the middle), I really feel like we need pendants over the island to break up the space. But I am definitely going to hold off on the pendants over the eating bar. @Patricia Colwell - i love that look but probably for another room. Thank you so much everyone!