Sorry in advance for the lengthy posting. I don't know how to describe this more concisely. :-) And please forgive any electrical ignorance. That's why I love this site. I know I can get some good advice.

We're in the middle of a partial kitchen remodel (keeping most of the cabinets, but modifying lights, countertops, tile, appliances). Our kitchen is beneath a second story bedroom and bathroom, so there's no access from the ceiling and we have a slab floor. We did have to cut a 3x2 foot opening in the ceiling when we took down the walled pantry to replace with a pantry cabinet.

We are redoing all of the lighting. Previously, we had just some fluorescent overhead lights and undercabinet lights. We are replacing with pendants over the island, canned lights, cabinet uplights and undercabinet lights. We are also replacing the outlets in the counter backsplash with plugmolds.

I've got a few questions:

1) When we were running new wiring for the canned lights, we found a run of Romex that was unsheathed (visible from the 3x2 opening). This goes from our dining room light switch to its sister 3-way switch. Is this to code? Should we try to replace this with sheathed Romex? My concern is that access is very difficult, so it's hard to pull new wires through.

2) What's the best way to run wiring from ceiling to upper wall if we don't have easy access to the ceiling? We need to run outlets to above our cabinets for the uplights, but can't figure out how to do that easily. We have access in the ceiling about 3-5' away through some AC vents.

3) We have two circuits to our countertops now, one on each end of a 5' run, sink, then 9' run. We were going to hardwire plugmold strips to each run with a GFCI starting at each end. For the 9' run, will that be too many outlets for one circuit? The 9' circuit will also power an undercounter wine fridge and two wall outlets in our breakfast nook.

Thanks in advance!