English Cottage Inspired Vent Hood Reveal: Recreating a Traditional Look

On today’s blog post, I am so excited to reveal the English Cottage Vent Hood that my handy husband Mike built for me!

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Happy Friday friends! We have made so much progress in our kitchen recently, including replacing our white kitchen cabinet pulls with beautiful vintage bronze pulls, updating our kitchen countertops with honed granite, and redoing our slate tile floors with hardwood! My kitchen space is truly the heart of my home, and it makes me so happy to be able to turn my English cottage interior design vision into reality. This week we decided to finally tackle a project I’ve been wanting to complete for some time: recreate a traditional English cottage style vent hood!

However, one aspect of my kitchen design has been on my mind lately: the vent hood above my stove. I have been searching for inspiration to transform my current custom hood with the timeless look of English Cottage architecture. The problem is, most traditional English cottage kitchens do not have a vent or range hood. Typically, the stove is built into a wood beam or brick structure. My goal was to try to recreate the classic look of a built-in stove.

Our Kitchen Over the Years

Before we dive into my inspiration for this project, I want to take a look back at the evolution of our vent hood over the years! When we bought our home, we were so blessed to have a brand new kitchen with stainless steel appliances included with the purchase.

We started with one of those microwave hoods that served our family well for many years, but I wasn’t in love with the look of a microwave as the focal point of the kitchen. Although we had a beautiful modern kitchen, my heart was with the architectural design of a vintage-style, traditional English cottage.

The next phase of of our vent hood journey was the installation of a reclaimed wood beam kitchen hood. This project began with the purchase of a vintage-inspired cook top range, which led to upgrading our black backsplash with all white backsplash, and removing the microwave as it no longer matched our stove replacement.

Since our old microwave had a fan underneath of it, we decided to install a ventless unit underneath of the white cabinets and hide it using a gorgeous reclaimed beam from a local barn. I absolutely loved the patina and tone of the wood, and how it transformed my whole kitchen. The wood beam was a beautiful, dramatic focal point in this space and was the perfect choice with our cabinetry and cooktop at the time, but I was still wanting something more.

English Cottage Vent Hood Reveal

I’m excited to share with you how we created this custom vent hood for $0! We used materials we already had, and it turned out so beautiful. I could not be more happy with it, and I just can’t wait to share with you the process and how it all came together.

We first decided to remove the two cabinets right above the vent hood beam as we really didn’t use them often. We had one or two items inside of those cabinets, so it wasn’t really necessary to keep those. We popped off the crown molding first, which we thought we were going to put back up. That didn’t end up working out, and I’ll share why later in the post. Mike then took the current vent hood beam down that we had put up after removing the microwave. We installed a ventless hood system, very similar to what a lot of microwaves have on them.  

Mike then built a frame using some beams for the sides that we had in the shed (some scrap beams that we pulled from that barn) and then a front piece as well in order to screw the front beam back onto that. He also added one to the back for a lip for it to come out just a little bit more, which I loved because now I can hang pots and pans off of that!

After we did that, my mom came over and we cut out all these different designs for corbels on the side of the beam because I didn’t want that cut edge showing. She hung a little tea towel on the beam as well to give us an idea. Are we the only ones like this? We are such visual people, my mom and I. We have to see it to know if we like it.  This was just so helpful to tape the paper right on there to decide what we wanted to do.

Next, my husband went ahead and created a frame at the top of the ceiling, and then he added some boards to the middle there. We just kept the cabinet up there and that way he had something to nail to for the arch in the middle of the vent hood.

A lot of tutorials that we looked up online used either thin plywood or luan or sometimes even drywall that you cut in a ton of places so that it has some bend and give to it. And Mike said, “Well, we have all this extra bead board. What if we just use that?” It’s very similar to a thin wood, such as plywood or luan. We had to play with the arch a little bit, but here’s where we ended on night one.  

I looked at it for a while and took a picture to send to my mom. But the following morning, Mike went ahead and added some nailers to the sides as well so that he would have something to nail the side pieces to, and essentially, he started off by adding a piece at the top and nailed them in.  

For the sides, he went ahead and held the board up and then just traced the arch that we had already created. This made the perfect little side piece to cover the beam. It has the corbel detail that we wanted and was a very simple process.

We finished the whole project in about two days! We couldn’t believe how simple it was. We had talked about it for so long and it just came together so quickly. Sometimes the hardest part, I always say, is just starting. Just getting yourself to start the project. But once we started, it really went so quickly.

We then primed it all so that the mud that I used would have something to grab onto. The primer we used is Zinsser Bullseye 123. We love this primer and have used it so many times. After we primed, I just used some joint compound that, again, we already had in our basement. I took a putty knife and spread it all over the hood very randomly. I kinda wanted a rustic finish and didn’t want anything super smooth looking; I wanted it to look a little bit older.  

My mom used this technique in her house on all of her walls actually, and I thought it looked really cool. There was no rhyme or reason to it. I took the painter’s tape off of the hood before it dried completely, just because I didn’t want to pull the joint compound off of the hood after it had completely dried, if that makes sense.  

I didn’t paint the hood, and I ended up really liking the color of the joint compound once it dried. It’s almost like a grayish, cream color – really pretty – and it got lighter as it dried. For the beam, I ended up sanding some of the compound off because I think I went a little too heavy. I took the joint compound and worked it into the beam to achieve the English cottage look. I wanted something that looked older and unique, and I haven’t really seen a hood vent like this!

As I stated above, the crown molding no longer worked in the space so we needed another solution to cover the tops of the cabinets. Once everything was dried down, Mike went and grabbed more of those beam scraps and put those up there, and I think it actually turned out really cool!

Now that we have this beautiful, English cottage inspired vent hood, I’m wondering if we should open up the cabinets! I love the look of an open plate rack in an English cottage kitchen, and I see these in almost every kitchen whenever I search English cottage. Each cabinet on either side of the hood vent would be open, and Mike could build plate racks. What do you think about opening up our cabinets? Let me know in the comments!

Well friends, I hope you enjoyed reading about the evolution of our vent hood! I’m so excited to finally be able to share this special project with you all! I am in love with the final results, and I especially love that we didn’t have to spend a dime on it! Do you like our new English cottage inspired vent hood? Let me know in the comments below!

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