DIY Vent Hood Cover from Scrap Wood

This idea blos­somed when we decid­ed to update our dark and drea­ry kitchen to an authen­tic farm­house kitchen, which you can rad about HERE. I had always want­ed a vent hood cov­er and since this is our for­ev­er home, I decid­ed it was time to take the plunge.…except for one small prob­lem. We had an over­head microwave mount­ed above the stove. There was no vent pipe redi­rect­ing the air, only the microwave and a small set of vents on the top. 

I refused to let my dream of hav­ing a beau­ti­ful vent hood cov­er fade. My hus­band and I chewed over the idea for a while and we came up with this solu­tion. This is less of a how-to tuto­r­i­al because every siu­a­tion is dif­fer­ent but more like an encour­age­ment for you to think out­side of the box when updat­ing your spaces. Make your space work for you and fill it with things you love. Just so happens…I love this vent hood and it is here to stay.

This is what we were work­ing with. Just a basic two door cab­i­net above an over­head mount­ed microwave. This look may be famil­iar to you, it is a very com­mon char­ac­ter­is­tic in cab­i­netry. Luck­liy, this sim­ple fix can give your cab­i­nets a facelift you may not have known you need­ed until now. 

Mea­sure­ments were tak­en and we decid­ed to frame a box around the cab­i­nets rather than remove them com­plete­ly. Let me just say that the pic­tures of the actyal “process” are not the great­est. Just imag­ine a rec­tan­gle frame, the same size as the microwave, made with 1 inch peices, screwed to the ceil­ing. That’s the best way to describe what Josh is mea­sur­ing for.

Of course our lit­tle helper had to take notes of Dad­dy’s measurements. 

We checked for a nice snug fit for the boards across the front and mea­sur­ing out the por­tion of the cab­i­nets that need­ed to be notched out for the side boards. This was only a test for fit that’s why these boards aren’t stained yet. All I have to say is my boys sure know how to bring a project togeth­er for mama. And a side note, most of these boards came from our SCRAP PILE! Free is good for me! 

Here, you can see a small por­tion of the frame at the top of the microwave/base of the boards. These are sim­ply 1x2 in pieces secured to the orig­i­nal form of the cab­ine t(at the bot­to­mof cabinet/top of microwave)) and the ceiling.

The next part of the process was notch­ing out a small por­tion of the cab­i­net. We used a sawsall but truth­ful­ly a dremel tool would have been the bet­ter option for pre­ci­sion. But non­the­less, this tool got the job done. The width was deter­mined by the thick­ness of the boards we were using. 

You can see here, that the cut was­n’t the clean­est. Luck­i­ly, at this point we had only primed the sur­face and I was able to go back and smooth out the rough edges with san­daper before apply­ing the fin­ish coats of paint.

We chose to stain it a nice dark, rich Espres­so by Mixwax. This is prob­a­bly my favorite shade of all time. I lit­er­al­ly use it on everything! 

Once the stain was dry, we brought the pieces inside and pieced the cuts togeth­er, attach­ing them to the frame with fin­ish nails. We gave it a lit­tle some­thing extra by attach­ing 1x4 boards over the seams for a fin­ished and pro­fes­sion­al look.

It is real­ly hard to pho­to­graph the sides of the hood due to the beams but boards were cut to fit on the top por­tion as well. Tak­ing the extra steps to frame in the sides too is what gave this hood the authen­tic look I was look­ing for with­out going over­board on renovations. 

-PIN THIS PROJECT-

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