Jackhammer all of that porous nasty floodwater contaminated brick veneer. It’s the elephant in the room. Get rid of the elephant.

So you want little hard sponges contaminated with sewage wicking it all through the rest of the sponges close to your food prep area? Didn’t think so. That’s just nasty. The brick has to go. Along with anything else porous that the flood waters touched.

I appreciate your concern but we only had enough water to hit the first brick for a few hours and it’s all been fully dried and drenched with bleach, mold killer etc. All of our cabinets, drywall even tile flooring have been removed. We kept the brick, studs and concrete floors. I would appreciate any constructive comments or ideas someone might have. This forum was a great help for us on our last house where we did a full kitchen remodel without being forced by a flood.

Are you talking about those modern looking glass curved hoods? Probably not, but just making sure what style curved hood your thinking of. Sorry if I don’t understand. Do you have a photo? Also what does the rest of the kitchen look like? Layout, etc...? Because now is your chance to remodel if layout is not the best.

Our thought was to get one of the curved island hoods with glass like the broan in this link http://www.abt.com/mobile/product_images.php?product_id=51032

We would remove the glass and make an opening in the brick the size of the chimney, insert the chimney in the opening and mount the body of the unit directly to the brick. If the curve matches that of the brick, then the brick would server the pupose of channeling things to the blower. The entire upper brick portion is hollow and running the duct to the attic through the wall is something our contractor said could be done.

The rest of our kitchen is a u shape with a large island just across from the rangetop area. We really like the layout other than adding more drawers where cabinets are-something we learned from gardenweb when we remodeled the kitchen in our earlier house.

They are in the process of building our cabinets in place now. They will be ballet white with the leathered granite below, hardwood floors and a butcher block top on the island

You need a vent hood insert. But now is the time to jettison the dysfunctional catacombs there.

The insets I’ve found are all fairly bulky and not curved, but we are still looking at those also. No jertisoning in the plans - we like the catacombs.

The insert is just the mechanichals for the ventilation portion. You need a custom liner for the entire brick area to provide the correct capture and filtration zone. Contact a local restaurant supply house for the name of a metal fabricator that can create the liner. You will not have an off the shelf solution. It will be 100 % custom.

They will also need to engineer in the required Make Up Air solution at the same time.

Thanks. We are hoping to keep the cost from going too high on this part as we have to replace everything in the bottom floor and this is added cost not covered by insurance; but realize we may have to go this route regardless. I was hoping to get some pictures from someone on the forum that had a similar configuration to help visualize what it may look like.