The disadvantage to all these goodlooking hoods is that they don't capture air. The hot air rising from the cooking area. Consider capturing air. And doing so in a way that increases your impression of space. We also have low ceilings (94.5 inches) in a galley kitchen and wanted a wall hood that would not feel massive / use a lot of the visual space. I'll use your thread to introduce my solution, and at some other time I'll put it all into a new thread. It's a small space, landlocked. We figured we'd make it feel big and open by not having any upper cabinets above one of the two counters --- just backsplash and open space above it, using a horizontal mirror on the wall to increase light from the adjacent space and that window about eight feet away. We removed most of the dividing wall between the kitchen and the adjoining windowed area. Above the cooking surface we felt we needed a structure that could hold the slide-out hood we would design. Reading arbordomus' thread from last January gave us both this idea and the other idea described so far, i.e. increasing visual effect by having something attractive over that other counter. Both a technically valid hood solution that took the space it needed, and an over-the-sink solution, light and airy. For the hood wall, a basic low-cost customizable solution was a wall of three 30.375" high Ikea Akurum boxes, with frosted glass doors and fluorescent light bars inside. Light comes from the horizontal base plate on the bottom: you replace each cabinet's OSB floor with a shelf designed for this purpose. The shelf has lighting in it. Then I did the same with each cabinet's top panel, and got more light. Then I added extra fluorescent bars with warm light bulbs to counteract the cold sameness of the IKEA fluorescent light shelving; I put these behind the cabinets, after first pushing the cabinets out from the wall (using spacers) and removing the cabinets' false backing. It's great to have two kinds of fluorescent lighting: a linear sum of white lights. The impact of this white light is WAY more appealing than either one all by itself. It's white light with increased "complexity". The fan is an inline FG6 from fantech.net. It's suspended from the ceiling. Neoprene rings prevents the fan's normal hum or vibration from going straight into the wall of the duct and traveling down the duct. (It's so quiet it probably wouldn't need the neoprene.) The fan is eleven inches in diameter. Eleven inches is available when I install the wall cabinets at 53" height -- and that happens to be pretty much at the "industry" norm of 54" height. In your case you could go with the 15" Akurum wall cabinet and save a lot of money. The fan has a six inch duct. I had the duct turn down and change shape to fit into my wall's stud cavity. A standard duct adaptor / transition piece, readily available in a large hardware store, turns the duct ninety degrees downwards and changes the 6" round duct into a 3.25" deep by X" wide rectangular duct. Here is where I had a guttermaking shop make another adaptor to turn the corner and transform into a wide wide rectangle for me since my wall studs are 24" O. C. apart. This big rectangular duct comes out of the wall at a 45 degree angle under the wall cabinets,at 47.5"- 53" above floor level. I cut this last angle myself since I had the metal shop just make a long straight rectangle and I didn't know yet what distance it would travel; also, I didn't know the precise height it would be installed at, near the ceiling. The filter fits in here. A wall switch gives me three speeds. I tried a few variable speed controls but they cannot match power factor so they create a little hum at low speed, which is not acceptable to me since low speed operation has to be silent for me to accept it. Summary: Blower motor : invisible since it is in an 11" header box above the wall cabinets. Duct: invisible since it's inside the wall. This increases your options for space / visual effects in your wall cabinets. Filter: under the wall cabinets at the mouth of the in-wall duct. Glass pullout: under the wall cabinets. Remember the goal: to increase the visual impact and the impression of space. A header box overhead holds three recessed 50W 12VDC 12.5 degree spotlights shining onto the counter. I removed the magnetic transformer from these recessed halogen cans, and installed a single electronic transformer instead, because I couldn't stand the hum from the magnetic transformers. Each bulb shines onto the counter while also highlighting the wood frame around the frosted glass panels of the wall cabinets. These glass panels are lifted to open, not pivoted out. The lift mechanism is Blum Aventos HF with 104 degree angle stop. The advantage is space and visual effect (again). The wall cabinet doors slide up and fold up. No opening sideways. If you get 15"h Akurum boxes WITH a lift up hinge, you'll save a lot of money and hassle time compared to my 30"h box. The overhead halogens are in a piece of the header that extends far enough out overhead to put the halogens directly above the front edge of the counter. A portion of the header 7"h extends 11" out from the plane of the wall cabinets. This portion was built in a gently curved shape; again to increase the visual impact. When the door panels are lifted up, the halogen light shines through the frosted glass to the counter below. - So far so good. Next step is to finish making the filter (baffle or mesh) and the official sneeze-guard / canopy / grease surface. I got this far by taking my time, so stay tuned and read my next post about this, in six months from now. The filter could be baffle or mesh or both combined. I have stainless steel that I can cut to any shape, and take to have welded together. As sneeze-guard / canopy / grease surface, I have a clear, not frosted, tempered glass plate that I intend to slide out and tilt down on a slight angle. The underside of the wall cabinets will hold the supports for the slider mechanism. Note that this is already made of tempered glass -- but in addition to this I intend to use more glass to make the whole air capture area even more fireproof, cleanable and clean looking. On the wall, I'll cover the drywall with perhaps one entire piece of glass, or epoxy grouted glass tiles, perhaps with some mirror pieces in there. 53" above floor is below-eye level. A glass pullout slider puts the airstopping canopy's front piece at a sneezeguard height and angle. Making it be able to tilt downwards too, solves a number of air flow problems common to ALL the kitchen exhaust fans we see in the market today. Consider how to stop your grease-speck laden air from rising and escaping the capture area. Solving this problem with a high-space visual effect will give you both what you want and what you need. h.t.h. -dr

I can't tell from your photo exactly what you have, but it appears to be some version of the classic Jenn-Air cooktop (some of which were rebranded as Maytag, Whirlpool, or GE). Your specific model may no longer be manufactured, but they've made the same basic design since the 1960s and the cartridges/modules are interchangable between nearly all of them and remain readily available, so the new burner cartridges fit into most of the old cooktops and vice versa. All of them allow you to remove the grill and replace it with a two-burner module. Some also allow the burners on the right side to be upgraded to a smoothtop radiant module; but on others the burners on the right can't be removed. If you see a rectangular frame around them that's roughtly the size of the grill on the other side, your burners are in a removable cartridge. Lift the front or back of the cartridge and it will lift out. The currently available coil cartridge (JEA700ADB) looks like this: That is what your right side should look like if it's removable; if not, you can still remove the grill on the left side and replace it with one of these, which will match the general appearance of the existing coil burners on the right side. (the grill pops out and will have similar electric pins on the opposide side from the one you pull upward). Or you can upgrade one or maybe both sides to these A122B radiant burners, one 6" and one 8", which look like this: The only cartridges that won't fit are the wider "Expressions" ones with the electric pins on the left or right side of the cartridge rather than the front or back which they now call the "Designer Line" series. Also, if your cooktop is made by Amana it uses a different shape altogether. But most of these cooktops can accept both older and newer replacement cartridges. Used ones (and some new ones) are all over eBay and Craiglist as well. They used to make some styles they no longer sell, including halogen burners (A126 or A126B, my favorites) that turn on and off instantly, soild disk burners, and even induction burners which are hard to find and expensive if you do. Grills and griddles are also available. You just need to verify that the grill cartridge in your cooktop has the four electrical pins at the end (with a fifth unused hole) and that the dimensions are roughly the same. Another issue if you replace the entire cooktop with the Ikea one you linked to is that your existing cooktop has downdraft venting, so unless you also have an exhaust hood over the cooktop, you'll need to add a separate vent hood or a raisable downdraft exhaust behind the cooktop, as the Ikea cooktop doesn't have built-in downdraft venting. Anyway, find the model number (often under the grill cartrdige on a placard, or underneath the entire unit) and then you can be certain which new (or used) cartridges will work with your cooktop. Here is a link that might be useful: Jenn-Air cooktop parts & accessories (click 'View All')

Hi cv2014, I still love the look of our Semihandmade walnut, to me it's very warm. We briefly looked into having Semihandmade make panels for the side and the back of the island, but we wanted a more substantial edge and it just seemed like we'd have better luck getting it to all work out if we hired a finish carpenter to do the job. We're very happy with how it turned out. You can go to almost any good lumber store and purchase a full sheet of walnut veneer for not a lot of $$s. Depending on where it's used, it could be ok if it doesn't match perfectly with the Semihandmade walnut. The corner cabinet has a filler piece, I think it was around 4 inches, that gives enough clearance so that the cabinet door can open without worrying about having it hit the door to the right. In my case I think I was also concerned about clearance so it wouldn't hit the oven handle as well. That was solved by making the pull-out next to the over slightly wider than originally planned. These are the older Ikea cabinet style, so I'm not sure if the new style has the same kind of corner cabinet or not. Good luck with your planning!

Hi damiarain, thanks for your taking the time to look at this, let me explain the reasoning for few of the things you discuss: 1. The cabinet next to the fridge is not a pantry, its a pull out cleaning closet, for a broom, swiffer, microfiber mop, vaccum cleaner... We dont really have anywhere else on the main floor to put these cleaning gear. If we remove this cabinet from the kitchen we'd still need to have a cabinet or closet somewhere else on the main floor for these items as i do not think its convenient to have these in the basement or upper floor. I did try to place this elsewhere but settled to have it near the sink as it made sense (garbage is under sink) but am open to relocating it. 2. Concerning the cooktop, although the base cabinet is 36in, the cooktop itself is actually 30 7/8" . The hidden range hood is 30in width with 385 CFM, i was told this would be ok but your comment is making me doubt that now... Could this be an issue? The height distance between cooktop and hidden range hood is 18.5in in case that matters? In terms of aesthetics, I do like this hidden style, i generally find that the classic range hoods (the ones with a lip sticking out of the cabinet) are ugly, alternatively the other chimney range hoods styles can be very nice however i find they look better when there is a lot of clearance on both sides of the chimney hood, it generally means more backsplash ($$) and less storage. When chimney range hood are squeezed in between cabinets i find it a bit awkward, the whole point of these chimney hood i find is to be kind of a accent/focal point, so it kinda defeat the purpose if its narrowly flanked by cabinets that hide it.. So i went with the hidden fan style instead, it creates a clean uniform look with the other cabinet around. 3. the idea with all the cabinets is that it creates a lot of vertical panels that are all the same size, so again it looks clean and symmetrical and i was reading that one way to make a room appear bigger is to draw the eye to the ceiling which can be achieved with lines. In the example you shared, the corner space seems to be kinda lost? im not sure how it works, there is that 21' cabinet in front of another cabinet thats in the corner partly obstructed. 4. You are right about the microwave being a bit high, we changed the location of the microwave a few times, but we found that having it a bit higher (still usable) is better than having it in a base cabinet (under counter), we rather tippy toe than bend down ;).