Needinfo1 - what Tom meant by recessed is a canopy hood. I.e. don't buy one of those flat hoods, even though they look cool. Also, the curved glass ones aren't so great. A canopy hood will capture best the rising smoke and grease. To the OP, a 30" hood will be fine. The hoods that are 36" wide over a 30" hood are the ideal, but so many of us cannot afford to forego the upper cabinetry for the 36" width. You should get a hood that is not a skimpy depth of 20-22". Those won't cover the front burners. As Tom said, a 24" depth hood would be good. Your question about 600 cfm vs. less cfm: it is better to have the 600 cfm, even if you don't use it that often, say, for searing steak, than to have an underpowered hood, and have to have it on its highest setting all the time. You'll have less noise if you can run your 600 cfm hood at medium or low, and still have the hood be effective, than if you are running your 400 cfm hood on high all the time because it is underpowered. Make sure your exhaust duct is sized properly. Most hoods specify an 8" or 10" diameter duct. There are some hoods that allow a 6" diameter duct, but they're harder to find. The problem with pushing too much air through too small of a duct is that you will get increased noise and decreased efficiency though no fault of the hood. So check your exhaust duct size (if already installed), and match your hood to it, or if still in the construction stage, install the right-sized duct.

As noted above, maybe a liner (hood without a fancy exterior) would be best for wood integration. I have a Wolf Pro Island hood, and it fits my desired hood height under an 8-foot ceiling by using a 1-foot extension. A seven-foot ceiling would seem to match the hood (or its equivalent liner) without an extension. In any case, island hoods are intended to duct upward, so you either have to put a bend in where the beams are, or continue through the ceiling. It is too bad that the main beam passes close to the chimney that you want to center the hood on. A large, quasi-commercial style hood at the ceiling could provide a large enough capture zone while being perhaps less obtrusive. Besides the question on the chimney sectional area, there is a possible issue with grease transport through a normal chimney, not that it hasn't been done for centuries, but then the heat source was a hot wood fire. The cooler internal tiles or whatever are being used to line the chimney will tend to collect grease more easily than thin sheet metal ducting that will tend to warm quickly. So the same issues as with wood creosote build-up may be in play. Also, using the chimney forces you to use an internal blower at the hood, rather than an external blower on the roof or exterior wall. An internal blower will be noisier for a given blower design and flow rate. What is above the ceiling by the chimney? kas

My Thoughts and My Appliances (Budget was NOT a Consideration--we bought what we wanted!) Electrolux Icon Designer Series 30" Oven. We love the big bright display and the large touch pad area-Why, just like a cmptr monitor, the bigger the better the older ya get. The smoothly fully gliding out shelves are a joy to use and makes checking on things, basting etc very easy--especially heavy things like a Turkey--Miele is now offering these shelves as an after market add on. We like the way it bakes and You will see many other users that concurr. And We just like the way the thing looks--so Form and Function Both. Trouble free for 5 years now. Elux Icon Speed Oven. Our most used cooking appliance. Baked potatoes in 15 minutes instead of 55 mins using regular Oven. Has many functions, Bake , Roast, Grill , Speed Cook, Nuke and even popcorn. The grill function is great for toast and heating leftovers that would get limp from Nuking (French Fries) for example. Miele Optima DW We bought it cause of the top cutlery tray. We haven't had a problems loading the DW and we had a KA before. Cleans well, Quiet, Ocassionally we might retieve some wet plastic items from it, but No Biggie. Jenn-air 48" Built In Panelled Fridge. We basically designed our kitchen around this. After living with an always over crowded Fridge (and Scientific Experiments going on in the back of it as one poster Mentioned) and things falling out----Well we wanted the biggest Fridge that was offered in 2005. We had a choice of GE, Jenn-air and Sub Zero. We chose the JA, we like the way it looked, inside and out, was well lit inside, had 3 different settings for different areas of the Fridge(Main Compartment-One for the Veggie Chrisper and another for the Meat Keeper--All had digital readouts. We like the Adjustability of the shelves some evenh with a crank handle. It was rated #1 for reliability in 2005 by Consumer Reports and it has been trouble free for 5 years now, it is very quiet, it has the Varible Speed Compressor that the new Liebhers are using--so I gotta really lean up to the thing and still concentrate to figure if it is running or not. Elux Icon Wine Fridge. It matches the rest of our appliances and has been trouble free too, not as quiet as the Jenn-air Fridge, but I still havta "Tune in" to hear it running. Elux Icon 30" cooktop. This thing continues to amaze us with its speed at boiling water, the controllability--ya turn it down and boiling ceases immediately. Very good simmer (well less than simmer 119 Degress F) so no double boiler needed for melting butter or chocolate etc. We usually cover it with paper towels when we cook so cleanup is "Just toss the towels" but even if something gets on it, still very easy to clean as the cooktop does not get hot enough to burn anything on. We had this for about a year, and it too has been trouble free. Anyway, these were the "Picks" for our "last and final" kitchen. We are 100% satisfied with all our choices and I have not seen one appliance that I wished I had bought instead of what We have--But that's just us, and what makes us Happy Happy as Emeril likes to say. Good luck on your upcoming Decisions:: Gary So per your request, This is from a user, certainly not an Expert like Antss or Trevor, Weisman or Deeagaux!

Laurenfounder, Don't be seduced by the kind of sort-of's. If you read Fori's and Antss's posts carefully, you'll see that they actually pretty much agree that a really good ductless hood can be better than nothing at all, and that it will do something, but that doesn't make it a good alternative to a proper duct and blower system. Think of half the grease from frying potatoes or stir frying in a wok, where there's a lot of aerosolized grease, half the steam from a big pot of pasta, and half the smell from stinky fried fish or corned beef and cabbage. Even a good ducted hood likely won't get 100%, but it will get most of it. Mine probably gets about 98%. I don't have noticeable smells and residues--just assume that a little must escape. I don't want to live with the half that's left behind by some inferior contraption. Do you?? If you have the choice to run the duct do it. The lack of utter uselessness posited for the best of recirculating hoods doesn't approach the usefulness of properly ducted ones. While you're having the ductwork done, make sure to talk to your HVAC guy about make-up air too, so that while you're benefitting from all that pulling power, you don't suck all the air out of the house (bad for gas furnaces and other flames).