If I understand, you want to refresh the kitchen and have a budget for some soffit work (though perhaps not in your estimation full removal) and new natural stone countertops. However, the budget is not large enough for cabinetry refacing or replacing. I understand what you would like to do, but hear me out for a few seconds and see if some of these ideas might spark additional possibilities for you.

An old thread here at Houzz describes one couple's kitchen problem where they had a non-load-bearing wall that needed to be removed, and all their quotes were coming in around $10K just for the wall removal with no new electrical work or anything but wall removal. They put off their renovation for several years due to this financial roadblock that would have taken a huge chunk of their budget. Finally one day, the wife was away on travel somewhere, and she called the husband to find he had taken a sledgehammer to the wall himself and done away with it--for free! Now, wall removal involves some structural concerns that would require some professional consultation, but I wonder if we might apply the same theory to your soffit. It appears you have a lot of electrical lines running through that soffit area, so that would need to be addressed somehow. However, removing the soffit itself might not be so difficult unless you have some ventilation systems running through them. I'd check into a DIY removal before completely crossing off that option only due to budgeting.

Secondly, when we hear someone doesn't have a budget for new cabinetry, yet isn't completely satisfied with the existing cabinetry for whatever reason (the finish isn't your favorite, you said), there comes a great caution to putting brand new natural stone countertops in such a situation. Natural stone countertops are in many cases a lifetime investment, and it's like the domino effect that once you get them in place, you may think you wish you'd refinished the cabinetry first and then picked a countertop to go with the new finish, and so on. It's true that in most areas, the cost of laminate rivals the cost of low-end granite, but laminate and quartzite are in completely separate price categories, and you said you're considering quartzite so I threw that in there. It might be good to take a step backward and consider your overall design as a whole. To make this more succinct, here are steps I might recommend:

• Select a total kitchen color scheme. Look at lots of photos of finished kitchens, preferably from more recent resources in 2019 and 2020 since kitchen design trends have been changing a lot in the last year or two toward more rich colorations. Pick your favorites of everything: cabinet color, countertop color, wall color, backsplash design, and so on. You'll start to see a theme emerging of what you really like.
• Investigate what is behind those soffits. Evaluate if you have the resources to remove them on your own.
• If you can remove them, then plan what to do with the wall cabinetry. A couple of ideas would be removing the existing wall cabinetry and replacing with open shelving, though this trend is on the wane partly due to dust concerns, but it would allow you flexibility with a re-design. You could also reduce the number of upper cabinetry units you have and even replace the panels in a few of them with glass to give you a different look. Removing the soffit is going to make you feel that those wall cabinets are too short, so you need to plan ahead. Typically with that much space on a wall, your uppers would be more like 42" tall or something close to that. You could add stacked cabinetry on top to give you more height, but it's hard to match new with old that way. It's perfectly fine to do different wall cabinets than base cabinets, so that's an option.
• Consider a ducted ventilation system for your stove/range top. This would be a huge benefit to any kitchen re-design especially if wall cabinet were re-done. The best extraction rate occurs with vent hoods that exceed the width of the range top by 6", so 3" on each side. If your stove is 30" wide, then the vent hood should be 36" for best functionality.
• Before getting new countertops, consider pulling your existing base cabinets forward to a depth of 30". This will give you a lot of extra countertop space in your kitchen. Also consider putting in a larger sink if at all possible. Workstation sinks are popular right now in widths up to 42" for the average kitchen.
• As a final step, select countertop and new backsplash material to go with the cabinetry finish that you picked first.

That's all for now. Hopefully some others will chime in with more ideas for you.

Hi,

Thank you for your very detailed and thoughtful response.

First, some information on me and my mindset regarding updating this kitchen as a whole. My husband and I have renovated quite a few kitchens, bathrooms, etc ourselves over the last 30 years and we are quite familiar with the concerns about the cabinetry you brought up. I have replaced old, dated cabinets with high quality units in previous kitchens and bathrooms and I have refaced cabinets. I have also refreshed those same rooms on a shoe string by reusing what's in place and updating the look creatively while saving a ton of money. I plan on helping this particular kitchen work better for us for as little money as possible, although I know I will need to spend more money than I would like to on certain areas of concern.

The house we are currently in is a very dated 1970s house we purchased two years ago in order to downsize and to use as a project for our retirement. We like remodeling and building things, it's fun. The house needs lots of work and we are slowly addressing each issue based on importance. If this were an upscale house in a different neighborhood, I would completely gut the kitchen and start from scratch. However, I can't see spending thousands and thousands of dollars on this particular house. We may enjoy the kitchen if we did a complete gut job, but I doubt we will ever get that kind of money back out of it regardless of how nice we make it. So I need to take a different approach here.

The Soffits

My main question and concern in this post is regarding the soffits, particularly the big, intrusive soffit over the windows. The soffits house only electrical wiring used for the soffit lights so removing it shouldn't be that big of a deal. I am waiting for estimates from a few contractors and if I think it's worth it to have them removed, I will. In years past, we would have already done this ourselves but our older bodies no longer want to do this type of large, dirty work. If I can find an interesting and attractive work around that visually makes some sense out of it, I will. This is why I posted my plea for help. RIght now the soffit is just a big, clunky light holder. The fact that it stops in the middle of the windows is what bothers me the most about it. I am sure they stopped it there to line up with the end of the cabinets to the right of the sink, but it is awkward and overpowering. It is the first thing you see when you enter the kitchen.

The Cabinets

While I am not thrilled with the appearance of these cabinets, I would like to work with them. These are not high end cabinets, but the boxes are made out of plywood and they are sturdy and sound. They are better quality than the inexpensive cabinets you can buy today and better than some of the mid-priced cabinets, so I would need to really spend a large amount of money to get mid/high end cabinets in order to make an improvement. I am happy with the general layout of the kitchen cabinets so I don't feel the need to reorganize with the exception of the area to the right of the sink base cabinet which has a tiny 6" countertop. More on that later.

The other reason I would like to keep the boxes is that I want to add as little debris as possible to our landfills. As I've gotten older, I am much more aware of just how much our society throws away and I have trouble throwing something out if I can make it beautiful, which I believe is possible here.

One of our fun retirement projects we have planned is to reface the cabinets. We have the ability and will have the time to custom create our door fronts to fit our existing cabinet boxes. This is another reason I don't want to replace the cabinets. Prior to the refacing we plan on replacing the cabinet hinges and drawer glides and we may even convert some of our lower cabinets to drawer bases near the stove. Time will tell if we still feel this is important when the time comes.

If we remove the soffits, I plan on building open storage shelves/cubes that match the width of each cabinet below. These will be lit and will extend to the ceiling and finished with a matching crown. We have a collection of art that I would like to display. Yes, I know that I will need to dust these, but I'm ok with that.

Vent/Range Hood

Funny you should mention adding a range hood. We absolutely will be doing that soon and it is one of the reasons we want to remove the soffits. Due to there being no attic above the stove, we have to remove the soffit over the stove at the very least in order to install it. We plan on doing this in the near future. I have done this in the last 4 houses I have lived in and renovated because we love to cook and need a hood in order to remove the intense cooking smells to the exterior.

Kitchen Sink

Part of the reason we want to address the huge soffit over the window is that we will be adding base cabinets (drawers) to the right of the sink terminating them at the right edge of the windows. Currently, there is only 6" of countertop next to the right side of the sink which disturbs the flow of stacking and rinsing dirty dishes before putting them into the dishwasher on the left. Not only does the shallow, 1970s sink splash water everywhere, but it seems to direct water out and over the 6" countertop and onto the hardwood floors. Temporarily we placed a piece of furniture under the window which has a finish that is very close to the cabinets and is the height almost matches the countertop, but water still has a way of getting in between the two and drenching the hardwood floors. We did this to have a place to stack dirty dishes before rinsing and washing, but it's not a great solution. Ideally we want to extend the countertop out to the right edge of the windows with drawer bases below. Luckily, our sink base is 42" so we plan to install a 36" single bowl sink that is deep enough to wash our small dogs. I haven't yet decided if it will be a front apron sink or not. Whether it is an undermount or a drop-in sink will depend on the countertop we decide on.

Finals Thoughts

So, I am still looking for ideas on making the monster soffit look intentional or for a way to minimize it's bulk. If you have any creative ideas on how to deal with it, I would love to hear them.

I hope this gives you a better understanding about my project/s. Thank you for your input.