Saga of the Refridgerator

The refrigerator is now plugged in and keeping pizza leftovers cold!  It’s been sitting in the dining room for a while while we puzzled the conundrum of getting it into the kitchen… We used a deep well bottle cooler (visit this website for commercial refrigerators) kindly provided by our friends for a while, till we got it.

We purchased at LG single door, bottom drawer refrigerator in white.

We looked at a LOT of refrigerators. We really liked the samsung sigle-door, bottom drawer but it has been discontinued. We also looked at a large number of french-door refridgerators. The problem is, that in order to access the drawers, the doors have to open more than 90 degrees.

You can kind of see in this picture that the doors have to really open in order for the drawers to clear the organizers in the door.

Since we are putting the fridge in the corner of the room, the right door will not be able to open much more than 90 degrees. We thought about taking the door organizers off the right door but the fridges are designed in such a way that the door is the only space for milk-jugs and 2-liter bottles. So, until we come up with a better solution, the single-door fridge is the only way to have a fridge in a corner.

We also didn’t want the water-dispenser in the door. With the bottom freezer, you end up having to have a second freezer element for the ice maker and that ends up taking up a large portion of your fridge space. The tap water is also extremely good tasting where we are so it didn’t make much sense for us. There is an ice maker in the drawer and even that isn’t super necessary since the tap water doesn’t get hotter than about 55 degrees.

Back to the saga, the fridge is 33″ wide, a standard-ish small-ish size. It is 30″ deep plus another 3 ” for the handles. Problem…the door to the kitchen is only 28″ wide. So the fridge was delivered with much excitement..then much disappointment..then resignation. We stashed it in the Piano Room/Formal Living room until we figured out what to do. My initial thought was that we would have to take it out the front of the house, down the driveway, up onto the deck, and in through the back door which is slated to be replaced anyways. So, we’d tear out the door, get the fridge in, and put a new door back. First of all, that is a lot of destruction to get a fridge into our house not to mention how would we ever get it out! Secondly, there is a dumpster currently blocking the aforementioned path down the driveway to the deck.

The fridge lived in the piano room for a week or so and then the cabinets come, fully blocking the path of the fridge. Stefan did some research and developed a plan. If you take the doors off the refridgerator, it is 27 3/4″ wide. The door is 28″ wide. That should be enough. This past Monday, we inspected and re-arranged the cabinets and removed the doors from the fridge. With much finagling we got the fridge lined up with the not 1 but 2 door-frames it had to slide through to get into the kitchen. With 1/8″ clearance on each side, we managed to force the fridge through perhaps the narrowest doorway possible.  I wish I had pictures of the feat but I was too busy guiding to snap any photos.

In the end, the fridge looks happy and healthy in his corner, keeping leftover take-out chilled and fresh for our next evening of house-work.

Sarah