I've shared a lot about
our kitchen this past week as we finished tiling,
shelves,
countertops, etc., but also had to share about our very cool stainless steel vent hood. It did not go quite as planned...
I was so excited we could do a dramatic stainless steel vent hood like in
my inspiration kitchens by removing the upper cabinets over the stove. Here are some "before" photos of this loooovely date, dirty hallway kitchen. Grease stain above stove, dingy corners of cabinets since there were no handles, broken tiles on counter, dripping faucet, pantry door off the track, filth everywhere else... (see the full
before tour of the house here).
The vent above the stove, while on an exterior wall, didn't actually vent anywhere so it just blew greasy, steamy air around, not adding to the cleanliness issue of the former residents. We wanted to do
open shelves on the wall to the left of the window and a cool vent hood above the stove!
I shopped around and found
this vent hood for about $150 at the time. What a deal!! I bought it even before we moved, I think, and it sat in our garage for months until we were ready to tile the kitchen walls.
Installing the vent hood
This is not a tutorial for how to install a vent hood... more of a "do as I say, not as I do"... but you definitely can learn from it!
We had never done anything like this before, but my dad had, and because it was an exterior wall he understood what we needed to do to make the hood vent outside.
The first challenge was measuring the center/vent location. Most ranges are 30" wide, but our opening is more like 32-33". The stove pushes up against the countertop, so we centered the hood over the stove and not the opening, but it's a little weird to have 2-3" to the right of the hood. We marked the center and drilled through the house!
To create the 6" opening for the vent pipe, we used a hole saw.
NOTE: Be aware of where wires are but still turn the power off before doing this!!!!
Once done from the outside, we matched the hole and drilled the drywall.
You'll notice that's a different drill from the first one... yes, we killed the first one by drilling through the siding and the project was put on pause while my dad and Jason went out and bought a new corded power drill. Here is the old one literally smoking in our mud pit of a backyard. It was super stinky.
Once done, we installed the exterior vent and caulked around it.
On the inside, we attached a rotating 6" vent pipe and drew a template of the hood so we could mark the installation holes and avoid those areas with tile.
I tiled around those areas (or, at least, I thought I did). Somehow we ended up needing to pull up a tile and add another one before mounting the chimney anyway.
To actually install the hood, we did the wiring (which also presented some challenges), and angled the piping down.
That was also tricky, and that's when we had to move the screws slightly to shift the vent hood over from the template. Must have been a problem with our template.
We taped it with HVAC foil tape.
Then the chimney. Poor Jason, struggling with this chimney! (While I cooked dinner/lunches for the week, as you can see. It was a stressful Sunday evening.)
Our vent hood came with two chimney pieces, so it's adjustable depending on ceiling height. But our ceiling was too low even for the shortest possible, so we had to cut the bottom metal piece that inserts into the hood, cutting off the pieces that anchor it. So it just sits in the tray and can get bumped around when we clean it. Maybe we'll find a better solution for that sometime, but no good ideas yet.
We also a hard time installing the bracket that the top piece screws into, getting it allllll the way up to the right angle of the ceiling so that the top of the chimney was flush, no gap. We did it, but it took a few tries because of the grout and ceiling texture.
All said and done... it's in, it looks great, and I am still happy with our purchase. I would still recommend this
vent hood but definitely plan to spend some real time working on installing it, or have it done for you!
