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 | 2/12/2016 1:10:08 PM Cleaning Up My Act and New Fridge Adjustments |
Okay… so I finally got my act together and pulled up the plastic in the livingroom (that I put down to keep the carpet clean while I was out of town) and vacuumed. Then while I was at it, I vacuumed what I could get to in the office, the bedroom, a random portion of the kitchen and dining area, the rug in front of the kitties food… but then had to stop because Hamper clogged up my upholstery attachment too much. How do I know it was Hamper and not Ten? Well… because Ten doesn’t like it when I vacuum her with the upholstery attachment. Surprisingly it took about ten minutes to fully clog up the spinning brush… at which point Hamper laid on TOP of the vacuum front so I could not use it anywhere else until I got the attachment clean and vacuumed him for about five more minutes. It wasn’t really any easier than using his normal brushes, but sure kept the hair from flying around so much. So that is a a little better. The house still needs a ton of cleaning, but at least that is a start. In other news... just before I went to visit my parents, my fridge finally died. It has been struggling for a while, and I put a fan in it to help move air around, but it finally just gave up making things cold at all. Luckily I have a chest freezer out in the shed and could move the frozen stuff, but the things that could not be frozen (like an entire door worth of condiments) were at high risk. I kept things as cold as I could with juice bottles of ice and ordered a fridge to be delivered at the first possible date. And here is what I learned from the experience. Not every fridge is designed the same. That may sound like an obvious statement, especially with high-end fridges, but I was shocked to learn that even the most simple of fridges may not include even the slightest common sense in it's design.    It was easy to see from the online pictures and description that the new fridge was white, 18cu foot capacity, and at a glance, looked just like my old fridge. But where my shopping failed terribly, was assuming that just because every fridge I have ever seen in my life has a meat drawer... that every fridge would have it. Yeah..... no. And even more surprising is that the options on the shelf spacing won't allow for three reasonably spaced shelves. The options are to have two really over-tall shelves and one strangely short shelf, or one strangely short shelf and two really over-tall shelves. Er.... what?! The only thing I can think is that somehow I purchased some kind of wine fridge... you could fit full bottles of wine standing up on the two shelves and have one short one for your cheese. Not exactly a reasonable design. Even worse, the door shelves have the rail far out and the shelf too narrow, so items as large as 2 to 3 inches could easily fall through if they shifted as the door opened and closed. I was all ready to call them up and say bring me a different fridge, but after closer look at the pictures of available fridges, the next level of fridge would have cost about $400 more just to have the meat drawer, and still a stupidly designed door. About $500 additional just to have meat drawer and a better door... and still the shelf placement would be strange. Who designs these things? So I got busy. The first item on my list was to install some kind of meat drawer... because that is where the cheese goes and I can't do without it... I mean... who could? LOL. Luckily I had taken out the racks from the old fridge, because who doesn't need a random wire rack shelf now and then? But despite the similar size of the racks, the shelf with the drawer had to bow a bit to fit and I didn't like that. So I found a bit of pvc L trim, cut it to fit, attached it to the new rack with zip ties and was happy to find that the glass shelf that fit above the drawer could slide in right on top of the drawer under the wire rack and doesn't bother the slide of the drawer. After sliding the drawer in place it needed a couple tiny bolts on the front of the L trim so that the drawer won't accidentally slide all the way out.         The second challenge was the door shelves. After some closer inspection I noticed that the rail for the bottom fit closer than the middle rail, so I swapped those two and now the middle and top are reasonable, but the bottom shelf now could drop items as big around as 4 inches out of the gap from the ridiculously small shelf and the over extended rail. While I could cut the rail to fit better and/or screw a new rail on, I really didn't want to void my warrantee before I even got it filled up with food. So I cut a piece of cardboard to fit the shelf temporarily and will replace it with some bent wire shelf when I find some that fits.   Sadly the one thing I can't change is the weird spacing of the shelves. I guess I will just have to try to get used to that. But for $500+, I think I can learn to live with it. As a cautionary tale... if I ever needed to buy another fridge... I would be sure to go in person, with a measuring tape, a milk jug, and maybe my favorite tea pitcher, and spend time checking out the spacing and design of the shelves, door, and drawers. Of course, since I was already making adjustments, I decided to do something about the ice trays that are always taking up an unnecessarily large amount of space in the freezer. I only need two or three since I seldom use ice, but they take up a whole section above them or get tipped over by stuff next to them. The answer was to hang a perfectly sized wire rack under the shelf. I had to bend the feet of the rack up to attach on one side to the shelf and straight into the shelf holes on the other side. Now my two ice trays don't get knocked around and don't take up a lot of space above or below them... and they won't freeze together if hubby fills them a little too full. I think I will put a sheet of freezer paper on the shelf above them to protect them from any spills.   | |
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POST LINKS BACK TO: 12/9/2014 10:21:48 AM - Frugal Fan Fix For Ferociously Freezing Failing Fridge | |
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Yours looks very nice with all your modifications.