Agree with me on this: There are really only just a few moments in life that render as much satisfaction as buying a new refrigerator. One with no one else’s grimy gook (or your own gook) strewn about inside, one that you can organize… from scratch.
Of course, it’s not a special thing when your kitchen fridge goes on the fritz out of the blue at 3am, making a whole lot of food questionable in quality. And it’s not a special time when you have to decidedly live out of a mini-fridge like you did in college, but that’s what we’ve been doing this month.
It was nothing to whine about; I’ve been willing our old, almond fridge to kick the bucket since June 2013 when we moved in (it’s dead!), and we get a shiny new appliance out of the deal.
Part of us hoped that the old refrigerator would hold out until we were ready to remodel the kitchen, but it’s cool, we’ll make it work. And while we knew that a quick $600 would have gotten us a modest replacement identical to the old unit (fridge on bottom, freezer up top, zero bells-and-whistles), given the opportunity, we wanted one with the works, bigger capacity, and mostly, a real ice maker. Somewhere in between the $600 easy replacement and the $6,000 fridge with the giant LED screen, camera, and its own app store that Julia was heart-eyeing at Lowe’s, we found the LG LSXS26386S, which is a very spiffy upgrade, but still modestly priced at about ~$1,700.
Jumping right to it, here it is!
(Shiny, right? Door-in-door action!)
The problem we faced in ordering a fridge larger than our old model is that our 1950’s kitchen wasn’t designed to accomodate such monstrosities. As you can see in this older photo, there were three smaller cabinets atop the old fridge, and they all had to be reconfigured. I’m fairly sure this is the only photo that exists of this angle of the kitchen; it was taken before I painted all of the cabinets, and time stamped February 2014. Back then, the fridge never felt ‘camera-ready’ (and still, never does).
Our original plan of attack was unnecessarily complicated, now that we reflect back on it. Remove all three doors, cut and re-route the edges and make them half the height. Adjust the height of the corresponding base cabinet, and bam, we’ve got three new little pint-size cabinets. Good for storing what? I don’t know, these were tiny cabinets already. And at the rate we DIY with a newborn in the house, it would have taken us weeks and weeks to make that happen.
Our slightly simplified approach involved removing all three doors completely, and lifting the base of the shelf up 7″ to accomodate the height of the new refrigerator. Zero-point-zero-zero dollars to complete, since we were able to reuse all of the same trim and had a bit of paint left over from the original job, and finished in just a day.
A little attention to detail and a new coat of paint, and it looks like this open shelf has been there all along.
We only had to relocate a few items that had been tucked away in those enclosed cabinets, but in turn made space for some larger cookware that isn’t used often, assorted books, and a few of our kid’s handmade ceramic vases.
Speaking of kitchen upgrades, I know I’ve been talking for a long time about the big renovation we intend to undertake; it’s getting a lot closer, with real plans and money and commitment to living in a mess for several weeks/months while it all happens. Next spring? Next fall? Looking forward to being able to share some behind the scenes stuff soon.
If you’re just joining, and you’d like a peek at the work I’ve already done in the kitchen, refer to these posts:
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