If you look at the Modern-Aire site, they have several shapes where the front tapers at the top to the depth of an upper cabinet, and the sides are straight so as to butt up to, and cover, the yellow cabinet sides you mentioned. Their typical sizes are 18" and 30" high, but you could get a 24" custom one if your budget allows. Or you could get an 18" and have a box made for above it to cover that area and to which you could attach replacement moulding. The box could be made of either wood matching your moulding or sheetrock. Vent-a-hood has a stainless direct replacement if you decide to stick with the same size you now have. I'm attaching the link to the Modern-Aire page that shows their shapes. PS-10, PS-11, and PS-26 all have the characteristics I was talking about above. Here is a link that might be useful: Modern-Aire Hoods

The specs for our 24 inch deep Best hood stated that it could be mounted up to 36 inches off the stove/range top. We mounted ours at 33.5 inches above the range and had no problems with head bumping, even though we are a tall family. I suspect that your husband's head-hitting problem will be solved, regardless of whether or not you pick a hood with soft edges, by mounting your new hood 33 to 36 inches above the range. If you have sufficient cfm, it should still draw fumes just fine. Our hood:

"We have 9 foot ceilings, so they didn’t take them to the ceiling because they said it would make them tall and skinny..." Really? I call BS. Here are my cabinets to the ceiling with 9 foot ceilings. I am beyond happy that my cabs go to the ceiling, eliminating the need to dust above them. My kitchen looks larger and brighter without the dark shadows above the cabs, too. My cabs are custom so we were able to spec 46" uppers with 8" crown but you can go with 42" tall uppers and 12" crown. I asked but you didn't answer: is there a reason why you haven't considered moving the fridge to the sink wall? That would give you wider aisles and a larger island, plus more room around your range and a better meal prep flow of fridge to sink to counter to range. I mocked up how that might look. You can use your existing fridge (that saves $$) and pull the base cabs out to create 30" deep counters, which will make your full size fridge look like a counter depth model. I decreased the depth of the cabs on the opposite side of the kitchen to 12" deep for a full run of pantry cabs. You may be able to eliminate more uppers in your kitchen with the additional storage the pantry cabs provide, which means that you could make the window over the sink even wider. Here's how that might look in your kitchen. I didn't draw it up this way but your one window would become either 2 slider windows or 2 single hung windows or, as they did in the above kitchen, 3 single hung windows. I shifted the island away from the sink counter, giving you 45" aisle between counters (42" between fridge door and counter) and 42" aisles between pantry cabs and island (assuming that your kitchen is 13'/156" wide). That also gives you more room around your range so a wider range and hood would look more in scale. That said, I agree with others: an oversized hood isn't the right fit for your kitchen. I also think it's an odd choice to spend so much $$$ on a very detailed, oversized hood over a 30" range. I think it will look like you ran out of money half way through the remodel so all you could afford was a 30" range, not the 36" pro style range you had intended to get. And definitely spend the money to upgrade to drawer bases. That's a splurge that you will never regret. Ever.

Hi there! While it isn't the most common, there have been times we have made a very long/large range hood and only need a certain size insert (for example 10' wide hood, only needing a 48" liner), so most often what we would do is install a stainless steel panel to allow everything to look smooth and coherent with the liner. Some people opt to add lighting to the "dead" panel space, and I would definitely recommend making sure you get the proper CFM for your space, but yes you can have an insert smaller than the range hood. Hope this helps!