Depending on how much electric rates are in your area, an Energy Star refrigerator of less than 25 cubic feet, freezer on top and ice maker in the freezer is one of the least expensive to run. After my DH carefully calculated this, I also stipulated that it needs to be white, not stainless steel or black. We'd had both before and those colors are sheer fingerprint magnets.
We went off to town to pick up a washer and dryer from Craig's List. Nice newish set, they'd gotten fancy red ones for Christmas and just wanted to get rid of the old ones. It was $200 for both of them and they work well even though they are a plain boring white and not a festive red. I don't know how Craig's List is in your area, it's pretty good in ours.
On the way home, we dropped by Home DePot to look at nail guns, we are doing a major restoration of a house built in '51 and nail guns are great things. However, after looking at nail guns, we also looked at refrigerators. Hey! He found one! Energy Star, 24.5 cubic feet, freezer on top, ice maker in the freezer and white! (I'd not realized how few white refrigerators are out there these days). It was a returned refrigerator since it had gotten a dent down near the bottom while it was being delivered. No worries, it hardly shows, but it had a discount for being returned. It had a discount for being damaged. It had a discount for being a discontinued model. It had a discount because of the pre-Christmas sale (this was a week before Christmas), It had a discount for being an over $500 sale. It started out as an $1,600 refrigerator, by the time my DH and the sales clerk got done with all their fussing with paperwork, it had turned into a $520 refrigerator. Then, since it was over $500, it got free delivery. AND because we were turning in the old non-Energy Star refrigerator we got a $100 rebate from the electric company. (Although I don't know why they'd give us a rebate for not using their services, but I didn't ask.) So, when it was all said and done, it came out to $420 delivered with the old refrigerator hauled away to boot.
So we were all happy with ourselves and were eagerly waiting for two days before Christmas when it would be delivered.
Did I mention it was a fifties house we're restoring? The original refrigerator is about three quarters to maybe half the size of the behemoth that was delivered. Here's the original refrigerator tucked behind the 30" wide kitchen door. This picture was taken when we were doing the initial walk through with the Realtor. This is the original refrigerator, it's probably a 1970's vintage.
This is the new fridge in the kitchen, it just overwhelms the space. We not only had to take the door off the hinges to get it inside, we had to take the trim off the doorway as well. It definitely wasn't gonna fit where the old refrigerator had been.
So we pulled the soffit off above the cabinets, moved the cabinet doors above the stove up and installed the refrigerator where the stove used to be and put the stove where the refrigerator used to be. It actually helped with the problem of how to reach into the corner of the counter that had been blocked by the refrigerator.
The new refrigerator still stuck out into the kitchen space quite a bit since it's much deeper than the 24" deep cabinets. This house is 'single wall' which is a construction technique common in older houses in Hawaii. All the walls - interior and exterior - are made of one layer of vertical 1" x 8" boards. No worries about if there's wiring or plumbing in the walls since the walls are solid wood. So, I just cut a hole in the wall to push the refrigerator into.
That set the refrigerator back into the wall by a foot and I used the bump out as an anchor to a row of shelves and the shelves sort of hide the bump out. This is in the wall between the kitchen and the back bedroom.
Seems kinda odd to think of building shelves as part of a refrigerator installation, but I guess everything is connected.
It doesn't loom like it used to and it doesn't use much power and we can now reach the corner that the old refrigerator used to block.
Of course, all this doesn't help you with which brand of refrigerator to buy, but sometimes it is what ever is on sale.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
