A couple of weeks ago, it dawned on me that I might need to replace the white range hood to match the new stove. Stainless steel is sort of a magnet for fingerprints, but they might as well be all over everything in the kitchen, right? It'll make for an easier investigation by the crime squad some day.I saw on the Home Depot website that the most inexpensive NuTone 30" looked exactly like our existing, 25 to 30 year old model. However, I've sort of discovered that looks can be deceiving. In the good, old days the cheapest models used to be solidly constructed without the bells and whistles of more expensive versions. Well, no longer. The cheapest models are .... precisely that ... cheap.
I noticed as I was leaving the store the box weighed about one third of what the old hood did. The switches and wiring are just about as thin as possible and even the design of the fan filter on the new model is a feat in low-cost engineering. Its fan is much louder too. I chose to take the vent damper off the older model as the new one would never have worked due to being so flimsy. Some might say that things used to be designed as overkill. The setup looks fine now that we've installed it. Yet, I know it is of much less value than the one it replaced.