OP's can create a mess dumping their trash to get other's reactions. Sometimes it's intentional and sometimes it's a slip of the index finger. It happens all the time though hopefully this thread wasn't intentional (say it aint so!). It does bring to mind something a dear friend sent to me the other day. Hope you all don't mind... it is a bit philosophical... but since getting it I'm looking at life like a "trash truck" so just wanted to share and sorry if it's inappropriately to deep .....especially before morning coffee!!! ;) One day I hopped in a taxi and we took off from my hotel for the airport. Suddenly a black car raced out of a parking space right in front of us. My driver slammed on his brakes, skidded, and missed the other car by just inches! The driver of the other car whipped his head around, waved his finger and started yelling at us. My taxi driver just smiled and waved at the guy....I mean, he was really friendly. So I asked, 'Why did you just do that? This guy almost ruined your car and sent us to the hospital!' This is when my driver taught me what I now call, 'The Law of the Trash Truck.' He explained that many people are like Trash trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it and sometimes they'll dump it on you. Don't take it personally. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Don't take their garbage and spread it to other people at work, at home, or on the streets. The bottom line is that successful people do not let trash trucks take over their day. Life's too short to wake up in the morning with regrets, so..... 'Love the people who treat you right...then say a prayer for the trash trucks.'

I just posted what will be the same advice to another post for hoods. Yosemite makes a pre cast hood that is pretty good looking that is somewhat similar to your picture without the corbels. They do not sell direct. My website will have it listed in a shopping cart for approx $900. A vent to go with it runs about $200 - 400 the larger fan unit costs more. If you click on the link at the end of the written text introducing Yosemite you can see pictures of it. On the 2nd page of hood pictures on Yosemite's site you will see they have extensions for different ceiling heights. Stanisci is a company that makes wood hoods with lots of curves in various heights and widths. They do not sell direct as their business model is to sell unfinished hoods to national sold cabinet companies that do not want to build them on site. Dealer costs when supplied by the cabinet company and finishded to match by them generally are $2,000 - $10,000 which is then marked up from there for profit of the local retailer. A few websites sell them to the public. You will have to finish them to match your cabinets if you go that route. I would think you could get a go painter to put a finish on it onsite that makes it look like cast stone. Here is a link that might be useful: Yosemite Hoods Link

marthavila: sounds like a good decision based on good advice. All the cfm junkies on GW are nodding their heads. Both changes will reduce noise: the duct upsizing reduces the airflow turbulence, and as you note, the larger blower may run at a lower speed with same cfm output as a smaller unit running harder. The latter is particularly true if you do have a continuously variable fan speed control so you can "fine tune" the blower to what you're cooking. I have a somewhat different take than trailrunner however, on the issue of airflow speed and grease handling. In general, the concept of a well-designed hood is to trap the grease before it enters the ductwork. Once it's in the ductwork, all is pretty well lost, especially if the duct run is at all long. Much of the grease will end up on the duct walls, never to be removed again. As a result, different hoods use different systems to trap grease. There is the Ventahood "squirrel cage" system, which uses a centrifugal fan that theoretically flings the grease particles into the fan housing, where it is trapped, while the air continues up into the ductwork. There is the mesh filter system, which is similar to what is used in most (barely useful) recirculating hoods and UC MW/hood units. The air flows through a metal mesh that is supposed to trap the grease particles. Then there are the baffle systems. These use a system of alternating U-shaped baffles that force the air to make two abrupt 180 degree turns before heading out the duct. At each turn, the grease particles that fail to negotiate the tight turn are trapped by the baffles (and shameless bias--the polished stainless steel baffles on our new MA hood are gorgeous! Almost too pretty to hide under a hood). High airflow speeds likely do not increase grease trapping efficiency: I could imagine that overly high airflow might even facilitate more grease making it past whatever filter system is being used. The reason that high cfm are desirable is not so much to whisk grease out the ductwork, which is unlikely, but to exhaust as much of the fumes/smoke/odor/grease from the temporary confinement in the body of the hood before it can spill back out of the hood into the kitchen. The combination of large capture area, a deep hood, and a high cfm blower should give maximum f/s/o/g evacuation. But totally concur with trailrunner's advice about starting the hood early and letting it run afterwards. Definitely will help.

Debbie, there is a very good reason why we bring those types of issues up. My response here is in general and certainly not specific to this particular kitchen. There have been many threads here where someone wants to do something and is adamant about doing it a certain way until all the drawbacks to it are pointed out to them. Sometimes repeatedly. Sometimes people do accept the advice, change their plan, and express how grateful they are that people kept stressing that the plan needed that change because it resulted in a better kitchen. Sometimes people come back later and they have ignored the advice and admit that they regret it as their kitchen isn't working for them as well as it could have. And sometimes people ignore it and are thrilled they did because they love their finished kitchen. And, other times, people find GW after they have completed their remodel because they have problems they need to fix and wish they had known sooner what the drawbacks to their original plan were prior to their remodel so they could have avoided having issues. In any of these situations, if the OP is told that there are certain drawbacks to their plan, they hear the concerns and mull whether they want to make changes or not, and then, for whatever reason choose not to make the recommended changes, at least they have gone into their remodel knowing all the pros and cons. So, in the end, they have made a deliberate choice. And that's fine, if the choice is deliberate. But what if nobody said anything and they made that choice and found that it didn't work for them and it was a horrible, expensive mistake and then we here, at GW, said later, that we noticed it wasn't a good choice but didn't say anything because the OP clearly thought they would like it? Then it wasn't a deliberate choice but, rather, an uninformed choice. Deliberate choices to go against functional rules or standard design choices are fine as long as they are deliberate, not due to misinformation or being misinformed/uninformed. Of course, this is also far more critical when it comes to functional issues vs. aesthetics. Aesthetics are definitely individual. And if the OP in any situation ignores aesthetic advice because they like something, that's IS cool and fine and their choice. And I'm always glad to hear later that they love their choice. In this particular case, the cabinet/hood are design issues. If the OP likes them the way they are designed and wants to stick with the original plan...fine, cool, awesome. People have pointed out both aesthetic concerns and Rebunky did a great job of pointing out potential functional concerns. Now the OP has more information to make an informed, deliberate decision. How is this a bad thing? The mixer issue? I use my mixer almost daily and, for how the great majority of us who bake or use our mixer regularly work, her choice of placement makes absolutely no sense. The reasons are, it is on a narrow counter, under an upper cabinet, requiring her to pull out the mixer to use it, which means the usable counter space has shrunk even smaller. Since that is the area where her cooking oils, seasonings, etc, are being stored, I doubt very much that there is room there for her baking supplies as well. This means she will need to carry all her baking supplies over to the mixer, then carry them back to put away. Extra steps, time and work. Not efficient. And since that counter area is so small, there likely won't be room for the flour, sugar, etc., to be placed on the counter while she's mixing things. Add to that, most baking and other tasks where a mixer is used, require access to water. Now add in more steps back-and-forth to the sink. Even more inefficient. In this case, since I suspect the windows and screens aren't open daily, I would rather scoot the mixer over when I needed to do that than have it placed in a spot where it's difficult to use. But, in the end, the OP can make any decision she wants. I see nothing wrong with pointing that out to someone so they can make an informed decision rather than, later, making a mistake. Of course, a mixer is easy to move but it certainly doesn't hurt to plan for these things ahead of time. Maybe the OP would then decide that they would prefer their mixer on one of those pull-up shelves in a lower cabinet and, because she wasn't considering usage issues, she now doesn't have an appropriate cabinet to place such a device. Or maybe they would change something in another spot in the kitchen to allow for a better baking center with a good place for their mixer in the midst of it. Or maybe they need to add an outlet to whatever location they might prefer using their mixer at. Again, thinking it through, knowing the pros and cons, and weighing these to make the choice that works best for them, means having advance knowledge. And their decision could be ignoring all advice and, again, as long as that's an informed, deliberate decision...fine, cool, awesome. I would feel guilty as heck if I spotted something of concern, didn't mention it because the OP didn't ask specifically about it, and then they came back later and shared their frustration with that issue, and I realize I could have helped before an expensive mistake was made. In short, I think you got grumpy over nothing.