I think slowly tackling the painting of your baseboards throughout your house will really update it. Especially if your putting all of that work in to update your kitchen.

Since the kitchen cabinets are going to be white, I would go with the white baseboards in the kitchen for sure. This doesn't mean that you need to change all the other baseboards to white too. The kitchen is a separate room, unless you have some of the oak baseboard butting up to the kitchen white baseboards you will be okay. However, you may want the baseboard to match in style an size.