Adulting: New Fridge

We have owned two homes. Both homes had “old” fridges. Side-by-side doors. Water & ice dispensers that were always broken and we never fixed because you can survive without those things.

House/Fridge #1 - with adorable Baby Nora and her “cool babies” on!

We think our current fridge could have been early 90s Frigidaire - ? At the time, I’m sure it was great. It’s done its job for a family of four.

Well, said fridge started literally losing its cool the first week of December. We vacuumed behind it - because you know, you’re supposed to regularly do that - yikes. This thing had never been cleaned behind.

Oh hell no.

Gave it 24 hours - still too warm. So, instead of repairing we decided to just get ourselves a new fridge. I’m a firm believer in repairing instead of landfill, but sometimes you just need to upgrade (and hope once the old one is hauled, it’s broken down for further use!).

Well, thank heavens we’d been bestowed with a beer fridge for the basement just a week or two prior. We did not lose any food, but it was a pain hauling it into the basement.

Tim and I had a knee-jerk reaction to find a new fridge that weekend. Girls at Nana’s... we hit Best Buy and Lowe’s with our awful, awful dimensions.

Yep. Terrible design.

Our fridge is tucked into a very specific nook built around this old fridge. Sigh. Essentially over an inch shorter than standard fridges nowadays. Thanks, jerks.

We were finding we had one option and it was basically what we already had. Meh.

So we paused and took a step back.
Had a friend bring UP the beer fridge temporarily while we solved this puzzle.
Looked around the kitchen for a hot second because it was poorly designed in our opinion.

- Do we relocate the fridge where the double ovens are?
- We don’t need double ovens
- Then if we pitch the ovens, we need a new range!
- But the flipping gas range is built into the horrid tile counter
- Then we’d need a new counter!!

The double-but-only-use-one oven.

The gas range built INTO the awful tile counter.

Thankfully the very handy friend who has been hauling this beer fridge around said “Guys, I can just cut UP into that pointless shelf hindering your fridge height.”

:: hands to heaven ::

SO after one long, loud, dusty night, Tim and his buddy got the shelf height to accompany a standard fridge. *I won’t go into the drywall dust that covered my kitchen. Serenity now.

Beer fridge + adjusted shelf

After another Saturday with girls at Nana’s, Tim and I hit Best Buy, Sears Outlet, Sears, Lowe’s and then back to Sears to ultimately land on a Kenmore. It’s a reputable brand and it was half off - which because of the deal, we will now have a fridge with that crazy “easy access door” within a door. Bonkers.

So it finally arrived Friday Dec. 23rd around 5:30pm - convenient. But it went in - JUST. We’re very happy and so is Nora with her easy-access door. 

And ultimately down the road the plan is to replace the range and tile with a range/oven combo and solid surface counter. The double oven space eventually will become a much-wanted pantry.

Yay homeownership!