I was wandering through the Warranty department at my day job last week and stopped to shoot the breeze with one of my co-workers. While we were talking, I noticed four kitchen exhaust hoods on the shelf. I was curious, since we do not sell kitchen exhaust hoods. Seems a cutomer had ordered them incorrectly and we were stuck with them.

Long story short, I purchased one for a deep discount. Why did I need one? Well, as you can see, the one that had been doing duty over our stove had seen 27 years worth of hard labor. It was time for a change. Amazingly, the old Kenmore and the new Broan were an almost identical match for size, color and wiring location.

 

Saturday morning's snowfall resulted in the cancellation of the home showing Cheri and I had scheduled, so it seemed like a good day to change the hood out.

The first step when dealing with any electrical work is to SHUT OFF THE POWER - and to verify that it is off. I accomplished this by shutting off the breaker and testing with the light and fan on the old hood. Neither worked.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then I removed the cover of the wiring box on the old hood.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This exposed the wires. I removed the wire nuts from the 'hot' (black) wire and the 'neutral' (white) wire. I also removed the ground (bare copper) wire from its connection to the ground screw on the hood.

I loosened the screws from the Romex connector so the wires would slide out when I removed the hood.

 

 

 

I removed the four straight head screws that held the old hood to the bottom of the cabinets. Pulling the hood forward, I could reach behind it and gently tugged the wiring from the Romex connector.

The wall behind the old hood was a sight. The original contractor did NOT do a very neat job; that much was obvious.

I set the old hood to the side and removed the Romex connector. I used a screwdriver to twist the metal 'knock out' from the new hood and put the old Romex connector into the hole in the rear of the hood.

 

I put the new hood in place after fishing the wires through the Romex connector. Then I realized that none of the pre-drilled holes lined up with the bottom of the cabinets. I pulled it down again and drilled holes in each corner, then put it back in place. I used the four supplied screws to secure it to the bottom of the cabinets. Then I re-attached the color coordinated wiring, making sure that the ground wire was fastened to the grounding screw.

I put the cover back on over the wires,installed a CFL bulb, and then went downstairs to turn on the breaker. Back up stairs I went, to test the new hood.

 

Success! The new hood looks so much better than the one that had missing splotches of paint. I don't recall what industrial strenght cleaner I used that did that, but it must have been some potent stuff.

Not bad for twenty minutes of work, and it will help when we finally get our home on the market.