Why we bought a $2300 fridge… [spugbrap’s blog]

Our old refrigerator died last weekend. It died once back on Christmas Eve 2006 (the day before tons of family was to come over for Christmas dinner), but we were able to get a guy to come out and fix it that day. He explained why it was pretty much shot, and we started worrying about having to buy a new fridge. He was able to virtually put a band-aid on it, but warned us that it would definitely die soon; could be tomorrow, could be next month, you never know. We were just happy that we could still proceed with Christmas dinner as planned, and didn’t have to go drop a couple grand on a new fridge right away. Also, the guy (who was an authorized Maytag repairman) recommended against buying a Maytag when we did end up getting a new fridge.

Since then, Lacey and I have looked at refrigerators when we happened to be at stores that sell them. Lacey determined the criteria that she wanted for a new fridge, and found a nice $2300 one that fit that criteria. I took a bit of convincing, before I accepted that these criteria were really important, but eventually I was on-board. Here’s what we were looking for:

- Ice and water dispenser in the door - this provides an easy way for all of us (even the kids) to get filtered water to drink. Over the life of the fridge, the amount of use we’ll get out of it makes it worthwhile to us. I had to argue with Lacey and myself repeatedly about whether it was really worth it, though.

- The ability to open the doors enough to easily put things like pizza boxes in - due to the location of our fridge, our old one could only be opened about half-way. Every time we opened it, the door hit the wall, and while we could fit a pizza box in the fridge, it required tilting/angling it around the door shelves.

Here are a couple of pictures to show the door only opening part-way:

The first criterion eliminates the standard, old-style top-freezer refrigerators, which leaves us with side-by-sides. To get a water+ice dispenser in the door, it adds about $800+ to the price, though.

The second criterion really narrowed the field. Every side-by-side model would have the same problem, because there’s a wall on the right side of the fridge. So, we looked at a newer style, french door/bottom freezers. The door on the right still only opens half-way before hitting the wall, but the door on the left opens all the way, which means overall it opens 3/4 of the total width, rather than about 1/3 like the old fridge.

We found 3 models in that style that had the water+ice dispenser in the door. They all cost $2000+, though, which is when I really tried to make us reconsider whether the $800+ water+ice dispenser was worth it. There was a Maytag, an LG, and a Kenmore. We were skeptical of the Maytag, based on the advice of the repairman, as well as brand reliability ratings in Consumer Reports. LG is too new of a brand to have reliability ratings, but Kenmore was one of the top-rated brands, and was also a brand that the repairman had recommended. We ended up going with a Kenmore 25 cu. ft. TRIO French Door Bottom Freezer Refrigerator, from Sears.

Here are a few pictures of the new fridge!