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Oh, Hey New Range Hood

The Kitchen. My favorite room in the house.  It is my favorite room to design, my favorite room to be in, gather and live.  I would consider myself a wanna be chef. I love to try new recipes and meal planning is not a chore for me – but truthfully a hobby.  Therefore, having a pretty but functional kitchen is number one priority for me in a home.  Also, have you ever noticed how people always congregate in the kitchen. Regardless of living room furnishings the kitchen will be where your guests land.  This could be a whole topic of conversation evaluating the why’s. I believe its simple, we are a culture of food love and food is nearly the foundation of all gatherings am I right? I digress.

When we moved to our current home we had an above range microwave. Actually it was above a counter top because the range was in the island

The microwave is not a heavily used appliance for our family therefore, I was ok with moving it into the island where it is no longer visible from most view points of our kitchen/main living area.  This is one time where function did not win over design with me. In full transparency it is a little less convenient having the microwave in the cabinetry however, the more powerful vent above the range has made that slight inconvenience worth the move. I did some research looking at how other professional diyers have transformed their existing cabinetry into a decorative hood.  This post is to serve as inspiration not as instruction :)…. As always my husband and I are not your diy place but I love to motivate you to look at your home with creativity and come to a vision for your space.  This was actually a very easy project to direct (my role) and moderate for my husband to construct (his role). The design is pretty simplistic where as the construction requires moderate skill.  

First step was removing the cabinet doors above the range.  We were fortunate there was electrical already wired because of the existing microwave so the actual conversion to the new vent was easy. The clearance  between the right and left cabinets to where the new range hood was minimum so you can see here we framed it out with 1/2” plywood.  1×2”s were used to frame out the widest part of the bottom and again for the anterior facing millwork. One word for every diy in our house… L-brackets. We used L-brackets to secure the plywood ad lower trim to the existing cabinetry

Here you can see after the frame of the hood was installed we placed the same plywood to build the sides onto front. If you consult “the Pinterest” you will see some styles that hinge the wood covering the top of the range however, this cabinet was hugely underused as it was and is somewhat cumbersome for me to reach so we opted to close it in.

Side angle you can see the clearance of the plywood to the existing cabinetry was minimal and why we had to opt for plywood. My husband would say this trim work was the hardest part of the project. You can see where he mitered the trim work to produce a seamless edge. After this step we caulked it and let the painters match the paint to our cabinetry finishing it off in an enamel paint.

This is the Amazon vent we used. It is 2.5x the surface area of the over the range microwave vent previously installed… yay more functional!   For my new build clients I do highly recommended a vented hood to outside. A few pieces of our backsplash tile finished this baby off.

Everyone loves a before… This is the day we moved into our home. 

And the after…

My hope with every post is that you feel inspired and motivated to make your current dwelling  a “Hive” that you love to live and thrive in.  Our homes should be our happiest place. 

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