Kitchen Island Lights

When we bought our house, there were some hanging cupboards in the kitchen that had lights dangling down from the center portion.

The cupboards over the sink blocked light and made the kitchen/dining area feel small and cramped. I took down those cupboards two years ago and it looked like this for awhile:

Before we got the can lights installed I removed the last of the wood from the ceiling and started painting it. After the can lights were installed, it looked like this.

I patched the drywall holes from the old light and the wood that supported the cupboards, then finished painting the ceiling. At that point I kind of pooped out and the lights looked like this for the last year or so:

I couldn't decide for sure if I liked the light, so I didn't want to finish installing if I was just going to replace it.  The metal edges left gray marks on the ceiling, so I draped wash rags over the ends to protect my paint job.

Recently I was in Lowes and decided to stop in the lighting aisle to see if I could find any lights I liked to replace the upside-down martini glasses (tell me that's not what they look like), and I saw this:

 A little shiny, but kinda cute, and I like the shape a lot better than the upside-down martini glasses. I bought one to see if it fit on the fixture and if I liked it at home also. Things don't always look as good at home as they do in the store.

It fit, and after some deliberation, we decided it looked good and we'd keep it. I went back a couple weeks later and bought two more. They're on the pricey side, so spacing out the purchases helped our budget. We had them hanging like this for awhile:

I finally found time to climb up on the counter, peel off the old painter's tape, and screw the light base into the ceiling. Doesn't it look so much better? I'm kind of sad it took me so long to finally do this, especially since it didn't take that long to do. We've been missing out on having a light fixture that looks nice and is properly installed :)

We haven't finished all the kitchen projects yet- they're more expensive and more involved then just painting walls and putting up crown moulding. It's taking awhile, but we're slowly making progress.