DIY Vent Hood Storage
Hello! We recently learned we will be adding a babe to our family (yay!!!), so we’ve been looking for ways to add storage around our small home! A while back, I took off the cabinet doors above our microwave and covered the space with a decorative cover (shown below) that didn’t function, but now we’ve decided to make it useful with some hinges!
The first thing we did was unscrew the cover from the frame.
Then we added two of our old hinges from the cabinet doors that I took off previously to the top of the cover on the inside. We knew we would need to countersink the hinges a bit for the cover to sit flush with the side of the frame though, so we traced around each hinge with a pencil and took them back off.
Then we brought the cover down to my wood shop in our basement and used the router to cut out the little areas where our hinges will go. We used a 1/4” straight bit and set the depth to just under 1/8”.
It looked like this when we were done!
The hinge is countersunk just enough that it won’t cause a gap now.
To make the cover easier to open, I also ordered these gas struts from Amazon.
The directions for the gas struts include some measurements you need to follow for your specific install, so we followed those and they work perfectly!
I filled the old screw holes and it looks so good!
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Just a note of warning... there needs to be at least 30" from the stove top to the bottom of a microwave/shelf. If you don't have that much space and you have a fire, you could be in trouble with the insurance company.
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Very cute. I already have cabinets above my microwave but I like this, it’s creative and different.
Frequently asked questions
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If you fill up the vent space above the microwave with 'stuff', won't you be impeding proper air flow above the microwave? You always have to have an amount of air space around a microwave, and it seems to me, that using this space for storage, you are hindering such air flow?
What exactly are you storing there