The Fridge Saga

The day before Michaela and I were going to head out to Utah, she came upstairs to get me. “The freezer’s broken.”

I was reluctant to believe that, as our fridge was just 6 years old. It seemed likelier that the freezer had been left open or something, but when I went downstairs to investigate, it was pretty clear she was right. The ice was sloshing around in the ice tray, and the ice cream was definitely drippy. I tried a slew of troubleshooting approaches for the next couple of hours, but ultimately it was clear that not only was our freezer toast, but the fridge had given up the ghost, as well.

Since it was just six years old, this seemed like something I could/should just get repaired. After speaking to some repairpeople and looking things up online, however, it became evident that the fridge we’d bought (an LG bottom freezer) was habitually problematic, with the whole line consistently often having exactly the same issues ours had. Fixing it was theoretically possible, but it was also expensive and often ended up in having more problems in the future.

Faced with a decision of either pouring new money into an iffy appliance or just buying a new one outright, we ultimately went with the “buy a new one outright” option, especially since Labor Day sales were almost upon us. Naturally, it wasn’t that easy. Even after I’d done all my due diligence (measuring fifty times to make sure things would fit into the kitchen, checking reviews and models, shopping around), there were still things that cropped up that I didn’t anticipate.

For one thing, when we’d installed our old fridge, we’d tapped into a water line to do it with a small connection kit that the new fridge installers refused to use. The day before it arrived, I had a last minute rush to get a new PEX line installed so that it would work seamlessly. Even then, when the fridge arrived yesterday, all of my measuring turned out to be off by a smidge. The new fridge’s depth hadn’t captured the water line on the back, which meant that it didn’t fit through my front door by about a quarter inch. There was no way I was letting that hold me up, though. I just grabbed a crowbar and ripped off the trim board on the door that was holding us back. (Better to pay $50 or whatever for new trim than to have to reschedule a fridge delivery or buy a different model.)

The good news is that the new one’s now installed, and hopefully life can go back to normal. Having it happen at the beginning of the semester wasn’t ideal, but whatever. It’s done now. For the record, we bought a new GE model. From the research I did, this should be a reliable appliance, but I also found that many fridges are much more temperamental now than they were years before.

Great . . .