Project Story: A Custom Steel Kitchen Hood for a Martis Camp Home

A builder working on a custom home in Martis Camp, just south of Truckee, came to our Reno shop with a problem we hear a lot: the kitchen design called for a statement hood, and nothing off the shelf came close. The architect wanted a dark, matte steel hood with visible riveted seams that matched the home's mountain-modern palette. Stock hoods are shiny, generic, and sized for suburban kitchens, not a 48-inch range under a vaulted ceiling.

The Design Brief

The hood needed to do three things. It had to fit the exact chase dimensions framed into the kitchen, taper cleanly from the range width up to the ceiling, and read as a crafted metal piece rather than an appliance. The finish spec was a blackened, low-sheen steel that would not show fingerprints from across the room.

We worked from the builder's framing dimensions and the ventilation contractor's liner specs, then produced shop drawings for approval before cutting any metal. That step matters on a hood like this: once the panels are formed and seamed, there is no adjusting the taper.

Materials and Fabrication

We built the hood body from 16-gauge cold rolled steel. That gauge is heavy enough to keep large flat faces from oil-canning, which is the wavy distortion you see on thin, cheap hoods, while still being workable on our brake for the compound taper.

Each face was laid out, cut, and formed individually, then fitted on the bench. The seams are joined with exposed rivets on the corners, a detail the architect asked for specifically. Rivets on a piece like this are structural to the sheet metal assembly and decorative at the same time, and spacing them evenly along a tapered seam takes patience.

The finish is a hand-applied blackening treatment sealed with a clear matte coat, which gives the steel depth without gloss.

The Result

The hood shipped to the site as a finished shell, ready for the ventilation contractor's liner and blower. Installed over the range, it is the first thing people see when they walk into the kitchen, exactly what the architect was after.

If you are building or remodeling in Truckee, Martis Camp, or anywhere around Lake Tahoe and want a hood built to your kitchen instead of forced into it, see our custom kitchen hoods page or send us your drawings for a quote.