When we renovated our kitchen 3 yrs ago, we purchased a new suite of appliances with one of the appliances being a side by side refrigerator. Side by side refrigerators can be a great option. The narrow doors don't eat up a lot of aisle space, and you can place both your most used frig and freezer items at eye level. So why was a new frig delivered for Mother's Day? I despised my refrigerator. Neither of those pluses applied to our situation. We don't have narrow work aisles in our kitchen, and our most used kitchen freezer items are gf frozen waffles, ice cream, popsicles, and frozen berries that need to be at kid level(we have a basement freezer for meat.) The reason for my frustration was the narrow width of both the frig and freezer compartments.
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| This is totally not my frig, but I posted this pic because it cracks me up. Can you imagine the deranged stylist screaming, "I said no tomatoes! Can't you people see my vision?" |
As you all know, I bake and entertain a lot. The frig side had a tough time holding large trays or full sheet cakes, and the narrow shelves meant dropping things off the front as I dug to the back leading to more than one floor cleanup. The freezer was my absolute nemesis. I bake several times a week. I love to work with my GF Puff Pastry dough, and have posted several recipes that use it. Puff pastry needs to chill for 15-20 minutes before going in the oven and the narrow depth of the freezer meant that I could only use my smallest baking sheets. I like my rollout sugar cookies to take a quick chill before going in the oven, too, and this would almost always lead to an, "Arrrggh!" as I forgot about the narrow width and had to transfer them to smaller cookie sheets.
Still, replacing an almost new refrigerator that keeps food cold(it's main function) is a pretty frivolous expenditure when you're a one income family. So I trolled craigslist and the marked down aisles looking for treasure. Last Monday I hit gold. Whirlpool Gold. 36" of concealed hinged, french door loveliness.
This lovely was sitting in the clearanced scratch and dent section at Lowe's. It's ice dispenser handle was missing. Which caused them to mark it down by half. Score!
As great of a deal as that was, $1050 isn't exactly chump change, so I walked around for a bit thinking about it. And that's when I noticed this sign.
An extra 15% off? Woohoo! Sign me up. We found an appliance specialist and he told us that the extra 15% wouldn't apply because of the extreme mark down that had already occured. Not one to be deterred so easily, I asked for clarification. The marked down sign didn't say anything about no additional discounts, and the fine print on the additional discount didn't mention clearanced items as one of the exclusions. It wasn't a Dacor, Electrolux, or water heater, and was decidedly over the $397 minimum.
The store manager stepped in and agreed that the signage could have been more clear, but that I shouldn't have to pay for their lack of clarification. End result: I got a refrigerator that retails for $2100 for the super duper bargain price of $892. Lowe's has free delivery, and they offer 12 months of 0% financing when you use your Lowe's card, so we took full advantage of that and will be paying $80 a month on our awesome new frig.
We haven't installed it yet, because we'd like to replace the missing handle first. I've found them on-line for only $15 and have watched a few how-to youtube videos, so feel pretty confident about the repair, but I'm considering cannibalizing the old frig for it's handle. Our old frig will be going into our BFF's mancave. They've outgrown the small frig in their garage, and don't need the icemaker as they have a portable icemaker. I'll post a pic when the new frig is in it's hole.
Thanks for popping in and checking out my awesome Mother's Day gift.
