Our DIY range hood cover

 I'm so pleased to have completed the biggest feature of our kitchen...with our kitchen being open to our living room I wanted it to look as good as it could and to suit the country home vibe of our church conversion home...for me a feature range hood was the right choice...it was something I could easily tackle on my own and therefore do very affordably...this range hood cost approx $100 to build...

I have yet to add the shelves to the left of the window to complete the bulk of the kitchen makeover...but they brackets are ordered....I have had to tackle this makeover in little bits because our budget is non existent to be honest...if there's a few bucks or some material I pluck away at something on my list...after a year I am happy to say I am really loving my kitchen, although it is not exactly what I would have selected overall it is looking really good and we are happy. 

This is the view from the stairs leading to the basement...

I still need to fill in the space above the cabinets to hide the venting and add crown moulding. The plan is still to paint the cabinets white and to change out the hardware...changing out the hardware is $$$ so that will wait till I can fill the holes and paint the cabinets this spring.

The range is 30" wide and the range hood now is 37.5" wide now. 

I used a piece of reclaimed lumber as an accent on this piece which ties it in perfectly to our island counter.

I stained it with minwax driftwood, then rubbed on classic grey, and accented with a little bit of ebony here and there and then I used minwax ultimate floor finish to seal it, in matte. 

Here was the plan...I wanted the taller cabinets flanking the range and a custom hood...the design changed a little before it came to be. 

Here is how it looks from underneath...I decided to save money and to make things easier and just keep the vent we had, it is a great hood and works well but it just wasn't the design I liked...so I simply left a 1" gap in the front to allow for use to access the buttons, it works just fine. 

I don't have a tutorial but I can explain how I made this cover, I built the sides first, I glued and nailed my design onto 1/2" plywood, then I connected them with wood both on the front and one piece on the back to act as the brace. 

I had to cut out a spot for the vent to slide over the venting.

I then took to my instagram stories to see if I should paint or stain, I had originally thought white but then I thought maybe stain... then painting became a good option...so after a lot of considering we decided to go with stain because if we didn't love it we, and I mean I could always paint it... but we love it stained so we are happy we tried that out, the people were right. 

The first step was to remove the cabinets I didn't want so that I could deal with and make the tile adjustments, the opening was 7.5" wider than originally there so I needed to cut out and replace about 8 tiles...that was not so fun but it had to be done. The cabinets we removed will be used in the laundry room and or the garage. 

On the Saturday morning, we removed the cabinets and the range hood

on the Sunday

I love the wider space above the range...the proportion feels better to me, the tiles were added and fixed and grouted, the cabinets were installed and the valance was re-installed.

Sunday evening...we managed to get the range hood back up...success

Just a reminder of how it looked before I made changes...its nice but it just wasn't me....

Before we touched it. 

More to come when the shelves go up and the painting is completed...

thanks for stopping by...

Kitchen planning and my top 10 counter top worthy toaster round up high/low

When we moved here to White Wood we had always planned to make some design changes to the kitchen...first let me say that our kitchen is a nice kitchen it is good quality and features a lot of good design, we have a quartz counter and good solid cabinets with nice drawers and pull outs, it is easily the best kitchen from a starting point that I have started with, it's not builder basic at all....but that being said it still isn't my vision of how I would like my kitchen to look, kitchens are so personal...

We do not have funds to make major changes and that isn't necessary...I just want to tweak things and my plans will likey just cost me some sweat equity...as low budget as they get.

We have currently updated the island base with shiplap base trim and paint as well we re-finished the wood reclaimed top...these changes made a huge difference to the look of the kitchen.

Making these changes seems to have toned down the orange that was so very dominant. Our next plans are to remove the modern range hood, it is a good range hood but it is much more modern than my personal style...so I will build a new wood hood cover with some shiplap and reclaimed wood and fan insert with the funds from selling this current range hood. I will also remove the cabinets flanking the range and relocate and use them into the laundry room. I will then replace them with the other closed cabinets that used to flank the sink and add more open shelving to the left of the window. 

The other cabinets are more narrow than the current cabinets so this will allow me more room to add in a wider more prominent range hood to create more of the feature look I am after, especially since out kitchen is so prominent in our great room I want it to be a really beautiful kitchen, a farmhouse style kitchen. 

I have been looking for inspiration for my new hood design, I love these two photos I found on Pinterest, there is almost too much inspiration on pinterest. 

LINK to Pinterest 

Link to pinterest 

There has been a lot of talk around the blogger/instagram world about pretty toasters... and since we keep our toaster out all the time I was feeling we needed an upgrade...I was really loving the Smeg toaster in white or cream but it was out of my price range...I went on the search for the perfect toaster for us...it was difficult to choose honestly...I wanted a four slice toaster as we had only had a 2 slice toaster before and with a family of four it takes forever to toast enough for all of us...

 I am going to rate this toaster 5 stars , it is not only pretty but works very well...I love the bagel setting. 

In my quest to find the perfect toaster for our open concept kitchen I found these ones and they were strong contenders as far as design... here is my round up of my top 10 favourites I found on Amazon... they range in price from $39.00-$500.00 

                                                 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 

                                            7 | 8 | 9 | 10

This Back to Basics toaster was my go to toaster for years and years, I have bought these for family  one Christmas because I loved them so much... I love breakfast food in general, it is my weakness, and this has been an amazing toaster, it boils eggs in three ways, makes poached eggs also, it's great... but its not the prettiest toaster and I have no space or time to be putting away a toaster, for me toasters get some counter real estate, this has always been a function over form thing but now that our kitchen is on display every day I wanted a good looking toaster that will obviously function well for our needs... so it got retired and replaced with the classic white and chrome cuisinart and a new egg cooker...but I would still highly recommend this toaster.

I purchased the elite egg poacher Back to Basics toaster margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /> poacher to replace the egg feature of our old toaster, because these little cookers are amazing at perfectly cooking a medium boiled egg...this little guy can cook up to 7 boiled eggs, two poached eggs and one 3 egg omlete...

Back to the kitchen changes....these will take place in the spring, I am feeling very much in hibernation mode although I will likely tackle a small closet  re-do over the winter if I can find time.

* this post contains affiliate links , purchasing items using these links will not cost you anything extra, but simply helps me to cover cost associated with running this blog, for years I have been purchasing items from Amazon for my personal use and have always has great experiences.

My DIY kitchen island round up

 I have completed the kitchen island makeover...it feels so good to check this off my list...I love this blue grey that tends towards teal sometimes throughout the day...it is huronia by Para...in melamine.

I seem to need an island in my kitchen..it just feels right, I am highly partial to a counter height island...it is most practical...but this one just wasn't my style. I knew I wanted to remove the extra cabinet door details and add ship lap and most importantly I wanted to add a furniture foot detail. 

the top of the island was built from the pews that were in the church...it was a very strong tone of orange...I am not at all partial to orange tones so I tried to re stain it but it didn't take well...it happens...so I flipped it over to the rustic side and I was able to stain it this grey brown stain...it is a mix of four stains and I am sorry I don't recall the particular mix. 

I love all the changes to the island and it really seems to update the whole look of the kitchen

it was simple enough to add v-groove ship lap style wood to this one side of the island.

I added easy to make furniture foot details to the base to give it a nice designer look

 it is a different kitchen isn't it? we really made very few changes but you can see just how much small changes can make a big difference

this is the island from our third house, the standard island consisted of two base cabinets and that seemed really tiny to me and I needed somewhere for the microwave so I expanded the island to house the microwave...

I made the functional and decorative modifications then I had an electrician come in and wire the island with power...I wanted an outlet so that I could bake at the island and plug in my stand and hand mixers.

I added bead board and stair posts to the island to add a large butcher block top

                                    this simple box cabinet was easy to create from plywood

paint always brings it all together

 this photo was taken on our walk through just prior to closing...this kitchen was nice and big but lacked any style and had no flooring...the flooring came after we moved in....that was fun... life of a diyer

this island is the first island I built, well the only one I ever built from scratch...it was one of my biggest and my first diy projects, I'm sorry I have no build deails on this

 this is how it looked when we sold the house, a soft blue, clad in bead board and with a solid oak butcher block top

so whether you want an island or want to update a current island, it is a pretty doable project even for the most novice diy builder...

do you need an island in your kitchen too...?