A chippy can create any kind of decorative effect you desire (its just fibre board and mouldings) and you can vent the mechanical hood under it. I have a godawful stainless steel modern hood in my vintage cottage. I'm sure the last residents loved it, but they failed to actually have the hood vented properly. It just vents into the roofspace. So I now have the opportunity to remove the largely useless anyway hood and start over. I'm planning the same as you. A faux hearth, boxed in with fibre cement board and then with decorative mouldings attached. The actual mechanical part will be properly vented outside.

We have a glass rangehood similar to Futuro Futuro's Acqualina Glass product and I love it. The top and bottom of the glass gets given a clean about once a week with citrus multi-purpose cleaning spray and then wiped down with a moistened glass cleaning cloth for a pristine finish. Takes around 5 minutes in total. Cleaning the brushed stainless part is more difficult. As mentioned previously, its hard to remove all the marks. Will definately try the WD40. Me, personally, I don't like the mirrored finish. Given the window is acting as the "splashback" I would have gone for something invisible like what Sheryl Horton showed.

My parents' old house had a wonderful oak front staircase that my six siblings and I used to race up and down, taking them two or three at a time, with only a casual hold on the railing. I don't know how we managed to never slip or fall. Now, the timber backstairs were steep, and had narrow treads and were poorly lit. We NEVER ran up or down them, but held tightly to the railing and hoped to heck we managed to stay upright. As an adult, my previous home had carpeted stairs, which I slipped on (wearing socks) and fell down twice, though thankfully I was closer to the bottom than the top. My current home has timber stairs with three narrow stainless steel runners stood on edge and inset horizontally across the front of each tread (this is supposed to help reduce risk of slips). I doubt I will get over the anxiety of taking another tumble, so I never go down them wearing socks, and if barefoot, I hold onto the railing for dear life and take it nice and slow. So far so good.

Parking and traffic is such a huge issue here, so I don't really have any option, it is Coles for me, but my last experience at a Woolworths store finished them for me anyway. I wanted some tubs of yoghurt but all the tubs on the shelf were past their use by date by weeks. Called the dairy manager and was told it was all he had and why would I want to eat such stupid stuff anyway. I have to admit over the last few years Coles seem to have really got their act together, and customer satisfaction is extremely high on their agenda. If I can't find a product, staff just don't tell me the aisle number, they take me to it and ensure the product is on the shelf. Store management is always visible and willing to listen the complaints and problems. I definitely don't like Coles agenda to replace branded products with home brands. They are taking away our freedom of choice and to me that is un-Australian. They are also putting Australian companies out of business costing people their jobs and incomes. Too much is about greed and not what is good for this country. They are also not factoring in customers with special dietary needs as far as added ingredients go, nor are their products always the healthiest. Salt content is one big issue - it really is a joke when a product labelled "low salt" has a higher salt content than another brand's normal one.