Kitchen/Cabinet Help Please

[Cheerio]

I've attached a picture of my kitchen below. There are several issues I would like to address:

It seems that the previous owners possibly had the kitchen cabinets refinished shortly before we purchased the home in February 2012. We noticed that they were kind of gummy when we moved in. Then, when it got more humid in the springtime, moisture would gather on the cabinets and it seems like the stain was running off, especially off the decorative molding above the sink. Also, when we leaned up against the cabinet, the stain would come off on our clothes. Has anyone ever heard of this/seen this? I tried to lightly sand one cabinet door and apply a polyurethane over the top to seal them, but the poly just ended up flaking off. I'm not sure why that happened, but I followed the directions on the can.

The other issue with the cabinets is that, because there is no seal on them, they get even more gummy and really dirty where we handle them a lot. This is especially bad on our pantry -- it is very dark where we always push the door to close it. We can't scrub the cabinets because the stain will come off.

We would like to eventually (possibly in five years or so, maybe less) bump out the wall on the left of the picture and expand the kitchen. At that time we will obviously just replace everything. But what should or can we do in the meantime? I don't want to spend a lot of money refinishing them since it's only temporary. I was thinking of just painting them white, although I know that's not necessarily a popular opinion around here. If I do paint them, I'm not sure what to do with the weird lights that are above the cabinets. You can see them in the picture - there are lights that are behind wood trim and some covering like would be in a fluorescent light fixture. I hate them, but if we took them out it would leave a pretty small gap between the cabinets and the ceiling/bulkhead, which I think might look weird.

So those are our issues. Any and all opinions are welcome!

[pixiedevil]

My two cents. It almost looks like they used a gel stain incorrectly on the cabinets and then didn't seal them properly. I'm looking into using gel stain on my cabinets and read a few comments that if you don't follow the direction of wiping off the access, it does something similar to your issue. Although it's really weird that a year later it's still doing it.

Personally, I would strip and sand everything and then restain.

As for the lighting above the cabinets, could you replace them with some kind of crown molding?

[lolc]

I second stripping, sanding and restaining. I don't know if something like "cabinet transformations" could work, but it would be something I would look into. And I don't see anything wrong with white.

Or a darker wood color like espresso with some brushed nickel knobs and pulls. I think that would look really nice actually. 

[Deleted]

It sounds like you need to get down below their stain, which is going to be a huge PITA. Can you put up with it for a little longer and move up your rehab? I don't think I could put in all that work to rip in out in 5 years.

Another thought, do you know anyone who works in a medical or dental office? (I know, odd question). When they redo their offices, they typically don't buy new equip and furniture, they have it refinished. We hired someone to do this in our old house. They came in and sanded and refinished our metal cabinets with an electro-static process, similar to repainting a car. He said they also do this to wood cabinets. The cost was around $800 for the inside and outside of all the cabinets and it was impeccable.