Those prices seem outrageously out of line to me! In early 2010, TOTAL cost for ours, including the actual working vent was less than $2500. Here is a picture of my kitchen where you can see the hood. My custom cabinet maker charged me $800 to make the custom range hood cover out of clear coated mahogany. (I JUST looked up his invoice to make absolutely sure that I was remembering the price correctly.) He designed and built the cover so it would fit over this stainless steel vent hood that we purchased from Sears for about $1500 on sale. The purchased vent rests on a couple of very small ledges inside the custom cover and fits so that bottom edge of the stainless steel hood sits about about 1 inch higher than the lower edge of the curved section on the front face of my vent cover. That way the purchased vent is completely hidden by the vent cover but the controls are easily accessible. In the shot below, (taken from underneath) you can see how the purchased vent fits inside the custom cover and you can see one of the "ledges" at the side of the vent. BTW, I just looked and Sears currently has the exact same stainless steel hood we used on sale for $1626. Here is a link to it: http://www.sears.com/vent-a-hood-euroline-series-model-wall-mount/p-SPM7417651910?prdNo=13&blockNo=13&blockType=G13 Or for even less money, Sears also NOW sells a 27" Broan range vent that is designed specifically to be installed in a custom enclosure for less than $600. See the link below. When we were building, I couldn't find ANY vent hoods that were designed to be installed inside a custom cabinet. (They may have been available but I could not find them for sale to consumers anywhere and I'm usually pretty good at finding things.) Thus we paid extra for the fancy Modern Euro "finish" on ours and then paid to have a custom cabinet cover made to give it the old-fashioned look we like! So, even if cabinet builders are now charging twice what we paid 3 years ago to have our vent cover made, it still looks to me like you should still be able to get the look you want for under $2500. You might need to pay a bit more if a very high powered vent fan is important to you...but the cover alone SHOULD NOT run you anywhere close to $4000. Sounds to me like maybe your cabinet maker probably ONLY knows how to make cabinets (boxes) and drawers and then probably purchases pre-made doors to go on those. He's probably doesn't know HOW to make a vent cover and the mere idea of making one scares him. Thus, he quoted you that utterly ridiculous price in order to scare you off from ordering a vent cover while still hanging on to the rest of your cabinet business. If it were me, I'd talk to another cabinet builder or two. And if by any chance, you're in my neck of the woods (central Texas), I'd be delighted to give you my custom cabinet builder's name. He was absolutely terrific! Here is a link that might be useful: vent designed for installation in a custom mantle style hood.

I'd probably leave the whole arch thing alone structurally and just yank off the tile, repair the drywall and cover the whole thing with stainless steel. A local metal fabricator ought to be able to do the job, or even the HVAC person that I would hire to put in a hood insert into the upper portion of the mantle. A cool stainless mantle hood echoes the traditional mantle hood that is so popular in traditional cabinetry, but the stainless updates it to modern. As for the doors, I agree that nothing about arched raised panels will work with either modern or transitional. I'd just take the doors off and paint the boxes to match the bases. Here's the key, though. Paint the cabinet back walls the same as your wall color. That will make the shelves and boxes "float" and appear more as open shelving that just cabinets without doors. I wouldn't fill the hinge hardware holes just yet though. If you can't live with keeping things tidy and dust free, then have some open frame doors made for glass and install those. If you find that you love the open shelf look, then you can fill the holes and touch up the paint. For the island, I'd pick a fun modern color and have at it with paint. Orange, eggplant, fuschia, lime, turquoise---there has to be a great color out there that you've used in the rest of the house. Even a "neutralized" color could work, like a sagey green, or a greige, or a gray-lavender or a browned orange or a blackened red. Pick up that island color with accessories for the kitchen and breakfast area. Here is a "how to" to paint those cabinets. It was originally posted in response to how to judge a professional paint job from a contractor, but the steps are the same even if you DIY. _________________ Here is how I would expect a pro to spray paint kitchen cabinets. A brush painted job would differ slightly in that you wouldn't hang the doors to paint. You'd place them on a work table or easel instead. It's time intensive work, and should take 7-14 days to accomplish completely and cost between 3K-7K depending on kitchen size and amount of detail in cabinets. Remove doors and drawer fronts. Remove hinges and hardware. Clean with TSP (tri-sodium phosphate) Rinse and let dry. Scrape any loose finish. Fill any damaged spots or hardware holes that won't be reused. Sand fill smooth. Scuff sand the rest. Tack off dust. Hang in dust free paint booth with wires through hardware points. Tack off dust again. Spray with alkyd based primer. Scuff sand again. Tack off dust. Spray with second coat of primer. Spray with first finish coat of latex enamel. Spray with second coat of latex. If glazing is to occur, that is next. Spray with conversion varnish. (If being brush painted, this step is typically skipped.) Add more molding or decorative details to boxes, filling nail holes and sanding smooth. Repeat prep process with face frames and exposed cabinet sides using plastic to create a spray booth on site. If interiors are to be done, they are done before face frames and sides. Interiors are difficult, and add both time and expense to the job. Allow everything to fully cure. Clean hinges and hardware and clear coat if you're keeping the old hardware. Install new (or old) hinges and hardware. Re-install doors and drawers and adjust for proper clearances. If you are receiving a job without this amount of effort, then you are not receiving a quality professional job.

To clarify my ravings: I use the term capture area to mean the aperture area at the bottom of the hood that air flows into. I use the term capture volume to mean the volume bounded by the aperture, the internal sides below the baffles, and the baffle faces. Note that capture itself means that the cooking plume enters the hood. Ejection through the ducting to the outside of the building is called containment. Capture area allows more of the expanding plume to be captured; capture volume allows for space to ensure that any reflected effluent doesn't spill out before containment. However, containment is mostly achieved by adequate air velocity at the baffles, and not so much by the capture volume itself, at least in imaginable to me residential cooking situations. In this schlieren image of a commercial hood trying its best, there is plenty of capture volume and capture area, but due to inadequate air flow rate, there is partially failed containment. Obviously, slanted baffles will ensure more capture volume than horizontal baffles for the same distance their low points are from the aperture. They also provide a direction for grease to flow. Commercial hoods are required by NFPA 96 to have baffle angles greater than 45 degrees to ensure rapid grease collection, but I haven't seen any residential hoods with such steep angles. Capture area vs. Effectiveness. Larger capture area up to where all of the expanding plume is captured is better than insufficient capture area. If the blower rated air flow rate (usually spec'd at zero static pressure which will never occur) were the same for two different apertures, the larger aperture would have a lower specific air velocity (ft/min or cubic feet per minute per square foot). This lower velocity could be less effective for maximum velocity rising plumes than a higher velocity, depending on what its value was. But not capturing the plume due to inadequate aperture size would clearly be worse for effective containment, as the missed plume parts escape without any chance to bounce off the baffles. Also, only the peak of the plume angular speed distribution reaches the 0.6 to 1.1 m/s level that the baffles have to handle with adequate flow rate; lower velocity parts of the plume that are captured by the hood aperture area are easily contained. kas

@Patricia Colwell Consulting You're right I should have posted some photos of the space. There isn't much wiggle room and behind the cooktop there's only about an inch or so which isn't enough room for a pop up vent. The end goal is to replace the cooktop with either induction or gas and do as minimal reworking of the cabinets and venting as possible. Unfortunately it's not as simple as just replacing one-for-one. I wish it was! And of course, our relator told us it was simple when we bought this house. The cabinets aren't what I would choose if I was designing the kitchen but it works for now until we can redo the entire thing years down the road. These photos make the room appear quite yellow but that's just the light balance. Everything is white. The floor is more of a neutral brown. The cooktop is at the far end adjacent to the double oven. Behind that wall is the washer/dryer. Currently the GE electric cooktop has a downdraft blower built into the cooktop itself. It works great but I can't stand cooking with electric especially after having gas in our old house.