To take a step backward from the last kitchen update, here, we need to give you on update on a few more “behind the scenes walls” tasks we had to tackle before we could move forward.

For starters, we needed to re-route HVAC vent that is coming up through the wall. You can see it below with the round opening facing out. This required a little simultaneous planning between how the vent for the range hood would run and how to re-route the vent. For clarity and ease of reading/explaining, I will refer to the range hood vent as a the hood vent and the HVAC as the AC vent.

First, we spent a long time at Home Depot trying to decide exactly what parts and pieces we needed to buy. It was frustrating because they didn’t have everything we needed, so we had to buy the materials to make a few parts ourselves.

Then,I had to determine how to route the hood vent into the attic (eventually out of the roof). This involved finding out how far out of the way it would need to be to be able to re-route the AC vent. We decided to run the AC vent in the attic and come back out of the ceiling. I figured out the length for the pipe between the straight pipe and the first bend and began to cut it.

My dad may not have known it at the time (or maybe he did), but he sent me home with a spare pair of tin snips that would come in remarkably handy. Thanks, Dad!

Melissa helped me mark the length and hold the pipe. She just isn’t in the picture because she wanted to show you what we were up to. After finishing cutting, I straightened out the edges with a pair of pliers to clean up any sharp edges.

Melissa wanting to document again… Me and the final piece…

This process happened a few more times, but below you will see the final pieces for the hood vent. The are dry fit together right now to get an idea of how it will look when permanently attached.  We’ll have two 45 degree turns to move the pipe out of the way so the AC vent could be rerouted into the attic. (We had to move it because it was in the way of the hood vent and because we removed the soffit.

We didn’t get many pictures of the vent pieces and assembly. but you can see the finished product in the picture below.

Because the duct for the AC vent ran through the wall, we needed a special size and shape of pipe to extend it up into the ceiling. I had to buy the oval shaped pipe from a wholesale sheet metal warehouse because that shape isn’t something that is carried in the ventilation section in your normal home improvement store, in case you ever need to know that.  The only size they carried was 100″, so I bought that for $15 and cut it down to size the same way we mentioned above.

For the AC vent that was already finished, I used sheet metal screws to attach all of the pieces together and rapped all of the joints with foil tape. You may think that duct tape is what you should be using to seal the joints, but duct tape is not for taping ducts (weird right?).

Below is one of the left over pieces. I also had about 6 feet of the oval pipe leftover. We’ll take them to the Re-Store right down the road, which is Habitat for Humanity’s version of a thrift store. You should look for one near you!

Well, ever done any similar duct work? Ever visited a Re-Store? Got any spare materials sitting around that you want out of the way, but don’t want to throw away? Donate them today!