Ask your designer to give you an image of both set ups, I think that the right one will jump out quickly. I have a stainless hood and love how easy it is to clean.

IMO wood hoods get gross and they ae re affected by steam and grease , so I would do stainless . As for open shelving never near a cooking appliance and honestly never in a kitchen is my opinion. They collect dust , grease and add to eye clutter .. I would also remove those cabinets that enclose that cooktop .

@Patricia Colwell Consulting, yes! Everything you see between the 2 ropes will be removed. I hate those cabinets along the counter, they just scrape along the counter every time we need to open one. In the lower section our contractor will just remove the extra ornamentation and we will square off the counter so it doesn’t have all the extra edging.

I have a wood kitchen, and couldn’t conceive of having a wood hood...aside from the cleaning issue, which @Patricia Colwell Consulting pointed out, doing the hood in wood would’ve been too heavy handed. We did a stainless Vent A Hood, customized.

what counter and back splash are you changing to?

You HAVE a wood hood. Just one that needs its legs chopped off. If you hate that, you’ll hate any other wood hood.

@Lisa Caudill Designs were just getting quotes so haven’t picked everything yet. Not sure on backsplash. I think we will paint perimeter cabinets white and Island cabinets a blue. This stone is in our laundry room and I love it, I think it would look great in the kitchen. I’m not sure if it’s Alpine Mist or Cosmopolitan White.

@User, I think it’s the surround and ornamentation (rope trim etc) that I find heavy. I think I would like the wood hood better if it was on its own and came out a bit further to cover the whole range. But these are great points about cleaning

@User, not at all. We are def working with the professionals on this. The company we have quoting is actually the one who installed this kitchen a couple decades ago. They remove all the doors and trim and take them to their shop to properly spray etc.

I think you can update the kitchen without painting the cabinets.