🖼️
The project:
A curved, plastered feature that hides a standard undermount rangehood. Instead of a visible stainless hood, we built a timber frame around an integrated rangehood carcass, clad the curve in plasterboard, then plastered and finished it with a textured paint coating for an architectural look. The result is a soft, sculptural canopy over the kitchen island, with the actual hood tucked completely out of sight inside it. It looks like a custom, made-to-order job — but it's built from a flat-pack carcass, an off-the-shelf undermount hood, and a couple of sheets of Gyprock.
- Materials:
- Undermount rangehood
- Rangehood cabinet (carcass) – A Kaboodle rangehood cabinet or similar to house the rangehood (alternatively, build a custom carcass from 16mm melamine or plywood).
- Framing timber – 70 × 35mm MGP10 pine or similar.
- Plywood (approx. 12mm) – Cut into curved formers to create the rounded corners of the canopy.
- Gyprock stud adhesive – To bond the plasterboard to the framing between screw fixings.
- Flexible plasterboard (bendy Gyprock) – For cladding the curved face of the canopy.
- Plasterboard screws
- Corner beads – Flexible/arch bead for the curved edges and standard external angle bead for straight edges.
- Paper joint tape or fibreglass mesh tape
- Jointing compounds – Base coat and finishing coat. Use a flexible jointing compound on curved joints to minimise cracking. A setting compound (such as cornice cement) is useful for quick filling.
- Sandpaper or sanding mesh – 120-grit followed by 180-grit.
- Textured coating – Dulux Texture Primer (base coat) followed by Dulux Texture Full Cover Roll On (or a similar roll-on texture finish from Bunnings). Apply with a roller and finish with a float/trowel for a rendered appearance. Tint to your desired colour before application.
- Paint – Topcoat in your chosen colour (if required, depending on the texture product used).
- PPE – P2 dust mask, safety glasses and gloves.
- Tools:
- Tape measure, pencil, spirit level (a laser level earns its keep here), square
- Drop saw / mitre saw for framing; circular saw
- Jigsaw — for cutting the curved ply pieces
- Cordless drill + impact driver
- Utility knife (score-and-snap the board) + plasterboard rasp / Surform
- Caulking gun (for the adhesive)
- Plastering kit: hawk & trowel, taping/broad knives (100, 150, 250mm), external corner tool, mud pan
- Texture roller + steel float / trowel — for laying on and levelling the texture coat
- Bucket + mixing paddle on a drill
- Sanding pole / block
- Ladder or step platform
- Vacuum / dust sheets
- Step 1:
Find the centre of your cooktop and mark the hood position on the ceiling/wall. Lock in your canopy height using the clearance rule above.
(600mm electric / 650mm gas / appliance spec — whichever is biggest).
- Step 2:
Have your electrician sort the power. Fit the undermount rangehood into the carcass (Kaboodle cabinet or your own box), connect the ducting, and fix the carcass securely to solid framing. This is the guts of it — everything else is dress-up.
- Step 3:
Frame the canopy out from the wall/ceiling. For the curves, strike your radius on ply with a string-and-pencil compass and cut a set of identical curved pieces with the jigsaw; fix them at the corners at roughly 300–400mm centres, then run battens across them to make a continuous curved surface. Get this fair — the curve is 80% frame, 20% plaster.
- Step 4:
Flat face first in gyprock. For the curved face, score/cut the back of the Gyprock multiple times so it bends around the ply corner curves — ease it over the formers and screw it off. Screws every ~200mm, heads just below the paper, dab of adhesive on the framing between screws.
- Step 5:
Angle bead on the external corners (flexible/arch bead around the curves), paper tape on the joins. This is what stops your lovely curve chipping the first time someone clips it.
- Step 6:
Base coat over the tape and beads — press it in, feather it out. Then two or three top coats, each feathered wider than the last, flexible compound on the curved joints. Skim the whole canopy on the final coat so there are no flat-vs-curved transitions — this is your smooth base for the texture.
- Step 7:
Sand between coats and again at the end (120 → 180). Kill the room lights and run a work light low across the surface — shadows show every high and low. Fix, dust off.
- Step 8:
Seal first with a texture primer, then build the finish with a base + texture coat. A Bunnings texture system (like Dulux Texture Full Cover, rolled on then float-trowelled) gives that solid, rendered-plaster look. Work the texture into the surface rather than chasing dead-flat paint — it reads like real render and quietly hides small imperfections. Keep the hood filter accessible for cleaning.
- Step 9:
Step back. Accept the compliments. Do not tell them how cheap the actual hood was (or do — that's the fun part).
