A Rather Disgusting All-Day Project

We've had an old, beat-up, dented, filthy range hood in our kitchen longer than I've lived here.  Shortly after I moved in, I cleaned it up and spray painted it.  It didn't work all that well so it always was covered in slimy grease.  The light wasn't working on it anymore either so I replaced the electrical bulb socket too.  This was a "temporary fix" until we were able to renovate the kitchen.

Well, we still have not yet gotten to renovating the kitchen although quite a few more temporary fixes were done to various parts of the kitchen.  We've been slowly reconfiguring the kitchen to our planned new kitchen.  We never did anything with that old, dented, ugly range hood though.  

About a week ago, I knew that range hood filter was in need of cleaning so I pulled that out in an attempt to clean it again.  I immediately noticed that the entire hood was dripping grease...  the fan was caked in grease...  the light was covered in grease...  the wiring was covered in grease...  this old range hood was now a major fire liability.  I either needed to attack the kitchen renovation project or come up with another temporary fix.  

It is not the time for a major kitchen renovation.  I need good weather for big projects.  We have no garage so all woodworking (building cabinets) needs to be accomplished outdoors.  We are socked in with snow now until spring so the only projects that get done around the house this time of year are smaller indoor projects.  This meant I needed to find another temporary fix for this now dangerous range hood.  

Even if I chose to simply buy a new filter, rewire the hood, and clean it up, this would cost me about $50 in parts and require a lot of work cleaning and rebuilding the old range hood.  And, unfortunately, I'd still be stuck with the noticeable dent along the front of the hood.  If I could find a "good" range hood for less than $100 that would make this task a whole lot easier.  All I'd have to do is remove this old range hood and install the new one in its place.  This was the way to go!

I still plan to install a far better and even larger range hood when we renovate the kitchen but this purchase would be a temporary fix that also provides a step up in quality.  (This new range hood is pictured in both photo here in this blog entry.)

I got online and quickly found an acceptable range hood that was still under $100.  The specs for the fan showed that it is far more powerful than our old range hood...  this new range hood is clean...  it has no dents...  it has a light...  and this new range hood has multiple filters.  I really liked the idea of multiple filters.  I ordered this range hood and it arrived yesterday.  

The plan was to quickly install this new range hood.  I figured it was a simple job...  unscrew the old hood, let it drop down off the cabinets above the range and then easily screw the new range hood in place.  I should be done with this in about 30 minutes!

Well...  that didn't go as planned and this quick little 30 minute task required about four or five hours of unexpected work.  

The wiring needed to be in a different place than where it was coming out of the wall.  I needed to install a new outlet inside the upper cabinet for the new range hood.  Moving that wire to the new outlet was a bigger problem than expected because I had to move it to the other side of a wall stud but I didn't want to open up the wall.  

I needed to reroute wiring for our under-cabinet lighting too and this was time consuming.  I also quickly found that the cabinet that was above the range wasn't mounted correctly (something that was done long before I moved into this house) so I had to fix that as well.  This meant completely emptying that cabinet which was a pain in the butt for a project that was supposed to be a 30 minute task.  

This upper cabinet was also covered in a thin coat of grease so I needed to degrease that before I installed the new range hood.  I didn't want to get any of that old grease, nor water, nor cleaners on the new range hood so this time consuming task needed to be accomplished now before I installed the new hood.  

I had holes to drill in the upper cabinet for the rewiring and new outlet.  This created a huge mess that even fell behind the range.  Once I finished installing the new hood, I would need to pull out the range and clean up the mess I made.  In hindsight, I should have pulled the range out at the beginning of this project but I really did think this was just going to be a quick and simple task so I left it in place.  I covered the range but I left it in place.

I also found that this new range hood was a different height than the old range hood.  It was noticeably thinner which meant I was left with a two inch band of old wall exposed under the new hood.  In the end, I chose to mount a piece of wood with hooks in it to hang our primary cooking utensils.  This wood covered the large band of old wall that was uncovered.  This took some time as well.

All in all, this little 30 minute task to swap range hoods really required about four or five hours of frustrating work.  And...  I'm still recovering from this latest bout with COVID so my breathing is terrible and I'm exhausted.  But, we now have a sleek looking and far more effective range hood in our kitchen.  And, it isn't about to spark a major kitchen grease fire!