When we moved into this house, I knew at some point we would be replacing things in the kitchen, just due to the age of the appliances and the quality of the cabinets.
I did not, however, think it would start happening this soon. There I was, making breakfast on a Saturday morning, when (for about the 7th time) I whacked the side of my head on the corner of the exhaust hood. So my hubby walks out of the house and comes back about two minutes later with a hammer and a crowbar. Right then and there he starts tearing it down.
I knew what I wanted the hood to look like and I’ll link the tutorials from the blogs I used here and here, but there’s a fair amount I did that doesn’t have anything to do with the other tutorials.
We capped the wires and took the rest of the hood down.
There ended up being a big hole behind the supports that I had to cover. I used mesh joint tape to cover the hole, making sure that I did not overlap the tape for a smooth finish. From there, I used joint compound over the mesh tape to fill in the hole. After every layer, I let it dry and then gave it a light sanding before putting another thin layer on.
The first pieces we installed were the ones on the ceiling. We made sure to find the studs so it’s super sturdy. The second set was attached directly to the wall, also on studs.
At this point I painted where the hood was going to cover so I didn’t have to paint so closely to the hood once it was installed. I don’t have pictures of that.
Now, with the hood that we bought, I believe it had a 7″ exhaust, but the roof vent we already had was only 5″. So we had to get two reducers in order to get it to fit. That’s why you can see the size getting smaller as it gets nearer to the ceiling.
This is also the point where we had to rewire the hood.
We didn’t get the measurements for the plywood exactly right, so I did take a little bit of the length off on the left side, but after putting the drywall on, it is barely noticable.
Turns out I cant cut a straight edge, so you’ll see there’s an uneven gap at the top.
Don’t worry, i filled it in with joint compound.
So there’s these really cool things I found at Lowes, and basically what they are is a metal piece bent at a right angle to make all the corners of walls nice and sharp without having to sculpt the joint compound to look perfect.
I used these for all the edges of the hood.
I found a YouTube tutorial on how to join all three corners together, basically cutting a 45 degree angle on the end of each piece where they are meeting. I didn’t even cut them all the same and it still turned out great!
As seen here, there is a gap between the edge piece and the plywood under it. The idea was to cut off the paper edge on the trim and fill in the gap with joint compound. I don’t know if there was another way to do it but it looks good to me.
Here it is all sanded and painted.
I’m SUPER happy with how it came out! And the best part is I don’t hit my head anymore!
I still have to figure out what to do with that tile…
Maybe when we get new cabinets and counters I will finally be able to change that as well.
