Island Pot Rack and Pendant Lights

I decided to change plans a bit and work on the pot rack and ceiling lighting instead of cabinets. We have a full Saturday and the weather is going to be cool, so I will be mounting the pot rack, pendant lights and can lights - lots of attic work. Its going to be relatively messy, so I want to get it all done in one shot. This is the last "big mess" thing we need to do.

Here is the assembled pot rack. Its made by Calphalon (link to orginal post). We bought the largest one they sell: 54" x 20".


When I laid out the rack with the pendant lights on the island, they were a bit too close to each other.

The nice thing about this pot rack is that its somewhat adjustable. I took the center pieces out to cut the length by 12 inches - now its 44" long. I could have also taken the rounded ends off to get 36 inches. Considering the rack cost $100, I can take the peices out and still pay signficantly less than the smaller version would be retail. I am going to use the 12 inch sections I removed for small hook bars on either side of the cooktop.

A tip on assembly: put in all the screws finger tight, then use a wrench to tighten them all down. They are much easier to align if you do it this way.

Now the spacing is much better. We want as big of a rack as possible, but not have pans bump into the lights.


I did a bit of research on how high the lights and rack should be. There is of course the common sense approach, but I like to get an idea of what the designers say to do. Unfortunately, as in many cases, there is not a clear set of guidelines that I could find online. It seems like 90% or are just add sites with some sort of fluff paragraph about lighting.

Here is what I found:

• Pendants should be 30" to 40" inches above the counter top
• You should be able to see through the island to a person you are talking to. We are a family that ranges from 5'2" to 5'10", so we are going with 30".
• Same for the pots hanging from the rack. A 20" long pan (includes handle) should be about 30 inches off the counter, but still reachable by the shortest person using the kitchen.
• The compromise we cam to is to have the bottom of the rack hooks 14 inches from the ceiling. We will set it up with a bit longer chain, and check it tomorrow.

The pot rack is going to need to carry a lot of weight, so I will be putting some blocking in the attic to support the eye bolts for hanging it. I will take pictures of how I do it and post them.

[Link to photo set]

More detail in my article library on eHow...