Sorry, I don't know where the rest of my last post went. I do agree with LWO that if your budget is fixed, you'll get a lot more in a 30" in that price range. Had a friend who wound up having to do that and lose some badly needed inches, not so much for budget as because she just didn't like anything she could find in a 24 enough to pay extra for less.

So I finally ordered the SV218D-30 from Euro-Kitchen and yep you get what you paid for. 2 Boxes. At first I was quite impressed with the Euro-Kitchen special logo tape they used. But when I opened the boxes it was obviously used. The styrofoams were dirty with foot and hand prints. The glass is new. The unit looks used. I can tell from the scratches in the back. The fan is metal but clean and it smells funny when I plug it in and turned it on (By the way it's a regular 3 prongs plug for typical outlet) The smell is hard to describe it's not disgusting but more like heating metal. The smell is similar to the new light fixture I installed but it went away within days so hopefully this will too. Handprints were all over the stainless steel. They could have at least made it more presentable. But once again, $460 versus $2000? Overall it looks nice! Just like the picture. Touch sensitive buttons, halogen lightbulbs, the corners are smooth and welded, I love the glass part. Quality looks good. Timer function is useful. I'm still not sure what I will do yet. All night I've been contemplating if I should have bought the Cavaliere at Overstock.com for $60 extra instead without warranty. At least with Euro-Kitchen I deal directly with the manufacturer instead of having Overstock being the middle man. I just hope it will last a few years until I move. I¡¯m going to try Futuro the next time.

You didn't mention whether you are talking about undercabinet or wall-mount/chimney- style hood or something else. Anyway, Kobe hoods give a lot of bang for the buck, and are well-made, with Kobe providing great customer service to boot. So check out that brand. Another choice is Costco which sells name-brand hoods at amazing prices. Typically lower-priced hoods use mesh filters, but Costco sells hoods with baffle filters which are better than mesh filters. Plus, you are likely aware of Costco's wonderful return policy should anything go wrong with the hood. Costco used to carry the Kobe Brilla hoods which was a fantastic deal, cause that's a nice hood. But I just checked the website and the Brilla hoods aren't there any more. Costco changes its inventory frequently; may be worth a trip to a Costco store to see what they have in the store. The Costco website right now shows Ancona hoods, but I am not familiar with that brand. Again, there's the Costco return policy... P.S. the 33" height above the cooktop you mentioned should be the maximum; 30" is pretty much ideal, but 33" is OK. Just don't go higher than 33". Below, I tried to direct-link to the hoods at Costco, but Costco will only link directly to the large kitchen appliances page. So, from there, search for "hood". Hoods at Costco Kobe Hoods Website

The pragmatic solution is caulking or installing a molding. The precise solution would be to scribe to the wall and ask a metal fabricator to cut your chimney precisely to those dimensions. I don't see how that would work for your existing chimney. So, most likely, they'd have to build a new one for you from scratch. That's going to be expensive, and there is a lot of potential for things to not quite work out. The other thing you could try would be to slightly recess the hood into the sheetrock. That requires some careful work when you patch up the sheetrock afterwards. Do you have a level 5 finish on the walls? Can't quite tell from the photos. That would make it even harder, as imperfections would be extremely noticeable.