We are about to redo our kitchen (cabinets, flooring, paint, countertops). We will be taking out the big 'light box' above the island and putting in drop lights. The question is: do we keep our soffits above our cabinets? We had a contractor come in and drill holes to peek inside. Nothing major running through there, so it will be feasible to remove. However, the tricky part is our dental molding. It runs all the way through the kitchen, eating area and all of downstairs.. there's not a good stopping point since the kitchen flows into the living room. With soffits removed, cabinets to the ceiling topped off with traditional crown molding, we will have a hodge podge of molding going on since there is a break between both sets of our cabinets (see pic below). One contractor suggested ripping out ALL of our molding and matching it to the cabinets. That is not an option ($$). We also don't want to top our cabinets with dental molding to match the rest of the house. Above our cabinets on top of a soffit is one thing... but actually ON the cabinet seems like it would be too busy (?)

. Also, we have an arch passthrough opening above our stove. With the soffits removed, it would leave a gap above the opening that would need to be addressed too. I don't know. We are really confused. Our soffits hold lighting for us and are trimmed out with molding. So they're not too bad. Should we just keep them?? It certainly would make reno's much easier. Thanks for any advice!