Did you all know “hoodwink” means to “deceive or trick?” We’re not trying to really trick you, but the photos in this post ARE a little deceiving. I’ll explain why in a minute.

As a side note: “hijinks” is defined as “boisterous fun,” and if that doesn’t just perfectly describe our nights on DIY, I don’t know what does…ha!

See, on Wednesday, Wyatt and I got the range hood hung up on the wall. It’s beautiful. Can we all just stop and admire it for a minute? I mean, really.

And it looks all awesome and finished, but it isn’t. That’s where the trick comes in.

See, it’s been raining a lot, and Wyatt hasn’t been able to go up on the roof to cut the whole to vent this bad boy outside. So, the pipe just empties into the attic for right now. Which isn’t ideal.

But, we’ve been without any sort of vent for a few months now and it’s been okay, so we figured a few more days wouldn’t hurt.

The good news  is that from down here, things look awesome.

And this bad boy is super powerful. It will hold a tissue up on the lowest setting, no problem! So, we’re confident it will be able to suck up any smells, smoke, and steam we have in the kitchen. Score!

He started by drilling holes through the tile to anchor the hood in place. He used a diamond bit hole saw for this (that he recently purchased to drill some holes in wine bottles for a different project, but that was perfect for this job.

It’s designed to be used with water so it doesn’t overheat, so he dipped it in a bowl of water every 30-45 seconds or so to keep things nice and cool while he drilled through the tile.

It wasn’t an easy, fast, or quiet process, but he eventually ended up with all the holes we needed to screw the range hood securely into the wall.

(These aren’t all of them, but it looked like a face, so I snapped a pic.)

(Also note, we planned where this range hood was going to hang before we did the drywall and added additional studs to the wall to give us something to screw to so we’d have a nice solid base. It’s also good to think about stuff like that ahead of time.)

Speaking of planning, we also considered our shelving when deciding how high to hang the hood because we wanted those to line up purposefully. Since we don’t have the shelves up there, you’ll just have to trust us for now.

That being said, it was a little bit of a “chicken-or-egg” situation because while we had some general ideas of where we wanted the shelves, we also had some ideas on how high we wanted the hood (not low enough to ever have to worry about hitting our heads on!) so it was a balance of those two though processes to come up with this exact spot.

I have to say, I’m already not enjoying the fingerprints on the stainless steel from hanging this big guy, but hopefully we’ll be touching it a lot less once we’re all finished installing it. And it matches the microwave and other appliances really well. Although I have found there to be quite a bit of difference in the “stainless steel” color of different brands of appliances. Ah well, close enough to make me feel like I’m living in someone else’s fancy kitchen, right?

If it looks white in some of these photos, it is. It comes with a sticky white protective film you have to peel off. (Before installing, we learned, as it’s impossible to get it all the way off once it’s attached to the wall, FYI.)

We double checked and triple-checked to ensure it was level and centered on our wall (we’d already planned for this position when we tiled and then Wyatt got it anchored into the studs. Then, it was time to hook everything up.

Wyatt will be back with a post including more specific details on how he vented this hood outside through the attic, but for starters, he just worked the duct work up into this hole we had left when we redid the ceiling:

Then, we were left with an ugly pipe to hide.

But luckily, our range hood came with a matching stainless steel vent cover kit. It was a bit too big for our space so we had to trim it down a few inches.

But then, we were good to go! No more ugly vent pipe!

Ok, it wasn’t as easy as I just made it sound. There were a few steps to mount that cover on the wall, but basically, we followed the instructions. Except, we ended up screwing the mounting bracket into the ceiling instead of the wall to avoid drilling through the tile and to avoid hitting the HVAC pipe behind the wall, though.

I’m lucky I married a man who shares my commitment to creative problem solving and “making things work.”

 

Then it was time to peel off the white cover and attach this bad boy for good!

Notice Wyatt not caring how many finger prints he left all over everything. No worries, though. Some vinegar and a towel, and a few minutes later, I had everything gleaming.

So there’s the first half of our range hood story!

Do you have a range hood? We’ve only ever had the microwave kind that vents smells and smoke and such right back out into the kitchen (which doesn’t really help at all!) so we’re feeling really, really swanky. Of course, we still have to figure out how to get it all vented through the roof. Anyone want to come help with that? 🙂

*Now, for another trick, (It IS Halloween season afterall, right?) this post was actually mostly written on Friday of last week, and over the weekend, we may or may not have gotten this project completed. Come back tomorrow to see! 😉