The OP stated that "also, we cant move the entrance to the dining room to near the front of the house since that is actually across from the bathroom." I think this means Jillius's plan would have to be tweaked to make it work. Lisafromvermont, do you like the blue cabinets and are they something you want to keep? I've owned 50 year old plywood cabinets, and they are as solid as all get-out, but they have all had a distinct odor, which DH and I refer to as "that old plywood smell." For us, painting the cabinets did not remove the odor. We even tried sealing them with poly, and still the odor remained. (We still kept those cabinets, distinct smell and all!) The old cupboards are cute, but, if you hang around here awhile, you'll learn of the virtue of "drawers, drawers, drawers!" for storage. This doesn't mean you can't do an unfitted kitchen, but it could mean you will be looking for some solidly built dressers if you don't want to go with stock cabinets. I agree with Lazygardens of the importance of nailing down your workflow in the kitchen first, establishing the eating area, and then finessing the cabinetry. I would keep the pantry! Many of us would love to have a pantry like that but can't find the space. Yours is already there! : ) Here's a floorplan I sketched up for you. It does keep the blue cabinets, which would make for a really nice baking area. I put in a peninsula where you could work facing the view out of the front windows. (I love to work facing a pretty view.) The prep sink could be shared by the stove's prep area and the baking area at the blue cabinets. I couldn't get a table to fit in this plan without removing the blue cabs, so I put in peninsula seating instead. Hopefully you'll get lots of other good ideas when people filter back in as the holiday season calms down.

You can look for families of lights... You will have pendants, flush mounts and wall lights all coordinated.... And you can keep the soffits if they style nicely like these: Or tear them out and put lighting on top of them if you don't want the taller cabinets to go to the ceiling with crown: Are you working with a kitchen designer? They should be able to put the plans into their design program so you can see the space 3 D. This is important - there are a few changes I would make to the plan... I would strongly urge you to get a full 36" lazy susan in the corner. I have seen the 33" ones and they are not great. Most garbage units are 21" wide ( there are a few 24s) - you don't need t balance the lower cabinets when you turn a corner on each side of the stove - just balance the uppers - the island blocks that visual anyway. Your wall cabinet all the way left of the hood and the pantry right of the ref. will need to have a filler next to them or an odd overlay on the door or extended style - the contractor needs some forgiveness to install level. Even though you are doing a counter depth ref. you should do panels on each side. or the pantries need to be 27" deep.... Just some suggestions! Good luck! Looks great so far!

I would vent to the outside above the window but I am more of a function over form sort of person. Paint the vent to match the color of the house. A down draft vent was not going to cut it with our range and how we cook. We have log house. Our hood vents out the roof and is at the front of the house. No way around it. We painted the vent green to help it blend in a little better with the roof. We also have a satellite dish on the front of the house. Not thrilled about it but we had no other choice unless we wanted it on the roof at the front of the house which we did not. Our range is on an outside wall and cabinets cover the ductwork that goes up through the roof.

It could be years before a remodel, you know how it goes, life gets in the way. Drywall's cheap. This is what I was meaning: RED is infill in the arch plane. BLUE is infill on the sides of posts. GREEN is infill on the angled wall plane as it looks like there is a silly recess there too. YELLOW is optional extend angled wall up to ceiling, but there is another silly notch there to complicate the cleanliness of lines. I also notice there is that short wall blocking the window (with the picture hanging), that looks like you can't walk behind it. In the future fix that along with the angled kitchen footprint.