kitchen inspiration {microwaves & hoods}

Last week I unexpectedly returned to kitchen planning and looking for inspiration when our over-the-range microwave broke.  Just completely dead.  We don't really use the microwave much, but I use the exhaust function daily when I cook.  So I immediately began looking for replacements, only to find that most standard OTR microwaves are about 17" tall, while our broken one is about 14".  Wouldn't be a big deal to swap one out quickly, except ours already hangs down below the cabinets, quite close to the cook top.  So of course I tried to research what we'd ultimately like to have there.. and am still undecided.  But here's a mix of what I'm thinking and a collection of inspiration photos. 

The original thought was to have a range hood on a blank wall or between floating shelves, and then a separate microwave.  A bunch of inspiration photos are shown here, but here's another few:

via

via

via

I also like the white fridge in the first photo - a thought instead of stainless?  In our tiny kitchen with limited prep surfaces, a stand-alone range hood would require a creative place for a small microwave, perhaps on a floating shelf like this:

via

Except I'm thinking the shelf goes under some cabinets - sort of like this (on the right, but deeper of course):

via

But then as I played around with layouts I forced myself to consider the fact that we may need to stay with the OTR microwave configuration.  This offers the benefits of space savings - very important here - as well as $ savings.  I think our existing one looks so heavy.  Here it is, from before I moved in:

I had to believe there was a way to make this look good, so I dug around for pictures of OTR microwaves.  This may be obvious to you from the above photo, but I didn't realize that our microwave dropped so low below the cabinets, contributing to the heavy and claustrophobic feel.  In the kitchens were the OTR microwaves look good, the bottom of the microwave is either flush with cabinets or slightly above. 

via

via

via

via

via

Granted, mounting an OTR microwave up higher may present an issue around ease of access, but again we don't use it much and aren't that vertically challenged, so maybe it won't be too much of a problem.  

End of the day, I still think I want to go with the range hood and separate microwave tucked away somewhere, so that's what I've been working off of.  It helps that we recently donated a bunch of unused kitchen stuff so we can focus on how much storage space we actually need.