SO... when you find out bad news what does any anxious new homeowner do???
Spruce up your 1978 kitchen!!!!
With Black Friday come and gone, we decided to take full advantage of some of the deals on appliances.
There is SOOOOO much out there and sooooo many reviews to read and determine what you want.
We looked at Sears, HH Gregg, Home Depot, and Lowe's.
After reading about 2 weeks of reviews and examining pieces we decided to start with the back wall of kitchen appliances first and move out from there!
The first appliance we decided to start with was the dishwasher.
I knew I wanted a flat panel dishwasher, (to keep connor's pesky fingers from starting the dishwasher 15 times a day, UGH, haha) it needed to be a tall tub to accomodate pots and pans, and the silverware holder in the door.
(picky i know)
We love it!
It is Whisper Quiet and we found a great deal on it at Lowe's the week before thanksgiving.
Now that we have an established "name brand" if you will; we went ahead and purchased the Whirlpool Gold over the range microwave.
It is Whisper Quiet and we found a great deal on it at Lowe's the week before thanksgiving.
Now that we have an established "name brand" if you will; we went ahead and purchased the Whirlpool Gold over the range microwave.
We do not plan to use the microwave over the range for long.
We will need to rebuild the cabinet containting the double oven to accomodate this appliance and add in a warming drawer.
Trying to find cabinet builders who can build what we are needing.
(if you are local please leave a comment if you have a person so i can contact them)
The next thing we went ahead and selected was a Beverage Refridgerator.
All three of these appliances have been installed and the beverage cooler is loaded up with my pellegrino and la croix waters!!!
I told this fridge was only for when mommy and daddy's friends come over so they don't go and indulge themselves in my grapefruit waters (ie ruthie get over here for some la croix!)
Okay.... next up is fridge, backsplash and hardware.
Need your help and input...
side by side fridge?
french door fridge? (this is what I think I want)
Cabinet guys (local people)
Thank yall in advance!
4 comments:
Never had a french door fridge, but my parents just recently went to a side by side fridge and I swear if I can ever get one, I will never go back. My only advice would be to check out reviews of it because my parents water thingy in the door is slower than a turtle race. I will check with my kitchen design person and see if she knows someone who can do cabinets and get back to you :)
Ok her name is Lisa Miles Russell. She is with Signature Spaces. Her number is (901) 591-6250. She is so sweet :) She can help you design your kitchen as well :)
We bought a LG fridge a few years ago and it broke so many times we finally just went to Best Buy and bought a new fridge -- the Samsung one with the french door refrigerator on top, a separate refrigerator drawer under that, and a freezer that pulls out on the bottom to reveal 2 drawers inside (and a little rack up front for small stuff that tends to get lost, like boo-boo packs or the small containers I make of homemade pesto and stuff like that. Oh, and it has a water/icemaker that my kids can access from the outside, our first! Here's the fridge: http://www.samsung.com/us/appliances/refrigerators/RF31FMESBSR/AA
Here's what I like about it:
- the freezer is large and with the drawers inside, stuff doesn't just disappear into the depths. Each drawer rolls out easily and is of a good depth. The bottom drawer is divided into two sides, too -- I can stack meat sideways on one side and put all my veggies in the other side, with treats and ice cream and other frozen stuff in the top drawer (the top drawer stays put until you pull it out, so that's actually the one that's good for hiding my ice cream stash!)
- the top freezer drawer is (the stash one) is wide and flat, so you can freeze a tray of something (very hard to do in a side-by-side).
- no ice in that bottom freezer is great -- more freezer space. Plenty of ice up top in a pullout bin if you need lots of ice at once.
- that middle fridge drawer with separate controls!!! This is where we put all our deli meat/cheese/sandwich stuff and all the healthy kid snacks - yogurt, applesauce, fruit cups, string cheese. It's accessible so the kids can get their own if they need to, and it won't mean disarranging the main fridge or getting into stuff that can spill. The controls are separate so you can make it a good drinks area for chilled wine, etc… it offers lots of possibilities once my kids get over the string cheese stage.
- the upper area fridge has the two doors with storage and 3 deep shelves for the usual fridge stuff. One shelf even pushes back so you can store extra tall stuff or extra milk (hard to explain, but imagine shoving half a shelf underneath itself easily).
- one downside is that because the ice maker is up top, you have less room on that left-hand door for condiments. But you have a whole fridge drawer that you can use, and plenty of room elsewhere. It keeps me honest -- no more jars of half-eaten stuff or rare jellies. I tend to buy just a few and use them well, and keep the other stuff in clear fridge containers up on the top back of the top shelf -- within reach, just not taking up prime real estate.
Oh -- your produce drawers are in this main fridge area -- right at eye level and clear, so you can actually see what's inside and get to everything. Love that.
You know how some appliances make you so mad you think "this was NOT designed by a woman!"? This is the exact opposite: It's super well-designed, fits how families live now, and I LOVE mine. (Granted, my last fridge was a lemon so may be coloring my ideal a little…)
I will say that efficiency is so key at this point in my life -- I had 3 kids in less than 4 years and I just didn't have time then or now to have to figure out so much about how to make these things work for me rather than against me, you know? Nice to have a large purchase that is actually working with our family and not a constant irritation of "why is it like this, grr".
Oh and one thing that I think you'd find important is that the water/ice are high enough for my super tall kids to reach (they are 8, 6 and 4.5) but would be out of most kids' reach until they're about 5, or old enough not to make a huge mess with it. Does that make sense?
Good luck!
Saw your request for fridge preferences, so here you go. I despise side by side refrigerators. They are never wide enough to fit in a tray or a platter of something when I need to do that. We have a French door (KitchenAid) that we bought about 6 years ago. It's been great. I don't keep a ton of stuff in my freezer so most of our food is in the fridge. It's at eye-level so it's easy to see what we have. I also like that I can open it all of the way and fit wide things in when I need to. We opted for one without ice and water in the door...mostly because I'm really weird and don't like them and my husband humors me in my weirdness. We have a water dispenser inside the door and I just get ice from the freezer when I need it. My biggest complaint is that Alexandra is only just now tall enough to reach anything in the fridge so I have spent a lot of time getting things for her that she really could have done herself. Kind of minor though in the grand scheme of things.
Should you decide to go with a side by side I have a stainless steel Whirlpool (Gold, I think) that we moved here from our last house. It was purchased by the previous owners in '09 when they did their kitchen remodel and we have been using it as an "extra" fridge ever since we bought the house in '10. I'd love to sell it and buy a more practical extra fridge, so I'd make you a deal!
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