Home Project 9: Finishing Up the Kitchen

We are finished in the kitchen except for one minor thing, actually getting the refrigerator to fit into the space that we have for it. From our kitchen floor to the bottom of the cabinets is 64.5 inches (which is ridiculously small by today’s mcmansion standards). After much pain and suffering, we found a fridge that was exactly (and I mean exactly) to those specifications.

However, when the fridge arrived, we found out that our definition of 64.5 inches was apparently different than the manufacturer’s definition of 64.5 inches, as back of the fridge was about ½ inch too tall to slide underneath the cabinets. Maybe that’s how all fridge measurements work, I don’t know. That was the first fridge that I’ve had to order. And based on the experience, I wouldn’t mind if it was my last.

At that point we could have 1) destroyed the cabinet about the fridge, 2) returned the fridge, or 3) carefully cut ½ inch from the bottom of the cabinet without destroying the entire thing.

Time to cut some cabinets...

I’d advise not being a douche like me and actually taking the dishes out of your cabinet before you cut into it. At the very least, it will prevent a lot of annoying rattling.

Fortunately for us, our cabinets have a piece of wood below that hangs about an inch below the cabinet door (referred to as a ‘rail’ if my cabinetry vernacular is correct). So, the good news is that we could cut into this wood overhang without having to cut into the door or otherwise destroy the cabinet. Using my trusty sawzall, I cut the wobbliest straight line in the history of straight lines. A pre-schooler would have been embarrassed by this line I cut. But while I got no points for style, it worked and we were able to get just enough additional clearance to slide the fridge into its spot.

Like a glove

So, with that that, the kitchen is basically done: new appliances, new sink and countertops, new lighting, and everything repainted to look new(er). Here is what the kitchen looks like now:

And here is where we started:

Home Project 8: Where Best Buy Loses a Refrigerator

With the kitchen nearly complete - no really, almost done – really, I mean it - the only thing left to upgrade were the kitchen appliances. Since I had the gall to force my wife to purchase a house without a dishwasher and little space to put in a dishwasher (other than the possible exception of the bathroom) the only appliances we needed to upgrade were the stove and refrigerator, which was perfect for a cheap bastard like myself.

But, there was one small problem. Literally, a small problem. As I may have mentioned, our house was built by a band of traveling French-Canadian dwarfs, and as a result, they left a space exactly 64.5 inches high between the floor and the bottom of the cabinets above the fridge.

Specifically, the space between the floor and the cabinets where the fridge would go was 64.5 inches high. For comparison, the average refrigerator sold in the US is about 70 inches tall and the smallest full sized refrigerator that stores typically sell is in the range of 66-67 inches. There are plenty of small sized (16 cubic feet or less) fridges that are under 64.5 inches tall, which would be fine for us if we didn’t actually cook, buy groceries or actually want to use it for anything other than a beer fridge.

The old fridge, hiding its shame behind pictures

That did not leave us many options other than a kegerator or possibly a giant block of ice. But after a good amount of searching, we found a 21 cubic foot fridge that was exactly 64.5 inches tall for sale on the Best Buy on their website. Not surprisingly, it was a special order product since most people aren’t in the market for ridiculously-sized refrigerators.

I ordered the fridge through the Best Buy website and received word that it would take a few weeks to ship. That was fine by me since it was an unusual order. My credit card got charged immediately, of course, but a few weeks passed and I did not hear anything further from Best Buy. I called their online customer service number and got someone in India (ugh). There was exactly one thing the Indian customer service rep could tell me: my online order was processed.

Thanks captain obvious. My credit card statement already told me that one. Unfortunately, the rep didn’t know where the stove was or when I could expect it to be delivered, or even how to go about getting that information. You’ve probably heard the phrase “it was like talking to a brick wall” but you don’t really know what that’s like until you speak with a Best Buy customer service rep in India. I asked to speak with the rep’s supervisor and the only additional thing she could tell me was to contact my local Best Buy store for additional help with the problem.

That advice sounded strange on its face, but I took the supervisor for her word and ventured to the local brick and mortar Best Buy. There I spoke with the customer service department and quickly discovered that, yes, the customer rep from the phone had indeed given me stupid advice. The local Best Buy store didn’t know anything about my Internet order and to resolve my problem I needed to call the customer service number provided on my fridge invoice. Now it was official: I’m getting the runaround.

So, I decided to write a rather scathing email to Best Buy using their online help thing. To their credit, I received a follow-up call a few days later from (I’m guessing) the manager of the local distribution center, telling me that they had my fridge and setting up a time when it could be delivered.

A day before the delivery date, I got another call from the distribution center, saying there was some kind of mix-up and they didn’t actually have the fridge I had ordered. It was going to be another few weeks before they could get it.

“Great, cancel my order”

A couple months had passed now since I originally placed the online order for the fridge and the only thing we had to show for it was a lot of wasted time. The stove we had purchased at the same time from Best Buy had already been delivered weeks ago without any problems.

So, fridge-less, my wife and I went down to our local Sears store and – while looking through their internal catalog – found a fridge similar to the one we had tried to purchase at Best Buy. We ordered the fridge and it came in a couple weeks later without any problem. Well, actually there was one problem. The door handle was on the wrong side. But fortunately, Sears just sent a replacement door with the handle on the correct side and had one of their technicians switch out the door for us.

So, the result: A couple low-end stainless steel appliances, a little over 1k overall. The stove was ordered and delivered in less than one month, but Best Buy screwed the pooch on the fridge, gave us the runaround until we canceled the order and found a similar model at Sears. Overall timeframe to get the fridge: about 3 months.

The next project: Actually getting the fridge to fit (it’s far from over).

***

You might be asking yourself, why didn’t we just knock down the cabinets above the old fridge, creating enough space to install a normal-sized refrigerator? Yes, hindsight IS 20/20. If I had known all the trouble we would end up going through to get this damn fridge, I would have definitely done that. At the time, however, we were just being strung along one day at a time.