You know what I didn’t give much thought to prior to our kitchen reno? Lighting. I figured we’d just hang a couple of pendants and call it a day. But in the end, the electrician wound up taking up one of the biggest chunks of our budget.

First, he had to fix all the problems in the former electric, several of which turned out to be very dangerous (as in, could have started a house fire any day dangerous.) Then we figured, as long as he already had the walls torn up anyway, we may as well do the lighting the way we’d want it for a long time to come. But we came to find that, as with most kitchen remodel decisions, choosing lighting was no easy task.First the electrician tried to talk us into can (recessed) lights, but since we are going for a bit of vintage sensibility in our kitchen, we opted for pendants instead: three; one right above the sink and the other two hanging on either side of the stove/microwave. After a lot of debate and a few trips to Lowe’s to return lights we changed our mind on, we ended up with this Allen + Roth pendant with oil-rubbed bronze fixtures:

Here’s a glimpse of how it looked in our kitchen the day the lights went up (but before we’d finished the cabinets!)

By the way, you might notice that our cabinet handles/drawer pulls are also oil-rubbed bronze, while the appliances are stainless. We debated a little over this. Jon thought that it would look weird to have two kinds of metal. I thought it would be too matchy-matchy and space-age looking to have everything shiny silver, and while I love (love! love!) the look of an entire oil-rubbed bronze kitchen, well, it just ain’t in the budget right now.

Finally I Googled something like, “Can you mix metals in a kitchen” and found enough designers saying YES YOU CAN that it convinced him. I’m happy with the result – I feel like the bronze softened the stainless a lot and gave it some classic character while still looking fresh and modern.

That left us with the flush-mount light in the middle of the ceiling. It took us two months to decide what to do there! I felt like so many of the flush-mount lights were so dated looking, with swirly frosted glass and brass fixtures. Because we have a small kitchen we wanted an understated, scaled-back light, not a huge chandelier or globe. But we also wanted it to have some style and grace.

And then one day as I was innocently walking through Lowe’s, not even thinking about lighting, I glanced up and saw this beauty:

I made a little gurgling sound and just stood there with my mouth hanging open, pointing up, until my husband came over to see what was wrong and whacked me on the back a few times. But I wasn’t choking, I was just in love. I loved the glossy white, the little clear glass beads, and how the silvery metal and black lines seemed to complement both the stainless and bronze metals already in the kitchen.

I can’t wait to share photos of her hanging in the kitchen, but this time I’m waiting til it’s done!

Besides the new lighting, we added several new light switches and outlets, which have made a huge impact on the way we use the kitchen and its overall feel. As for recessed lights, we did do one – inside the closet which will one day turn into my pantry. Soon. (I hope.) Thanks for following along with our kitchen reno journey. I can’t wait to show pictures of our all-the-way-finished project!