New Refrigerator

Our new refrigerator arrived today, as scheduled, so that is a bit of good news during perhaps the worst start of any new year in my life.  

The furnace broke down in the middle of the night in late January and now needs to be replaced.  The refrigerator broke down and needed to be replaced because it was beyond repair.  Sheila's mom is in the hospital with a fractured spine, Alheimer's, and now COVID.  Sheila's dad also now has COVID.  I spent some time in the hospital and I need to head back to the hospital next week for a bone marrow biopsy.  My health is still rather poor with continued problems that had landed me in the hospital about a month and a half ago.  It really has been a miserable start to the new year.

Just as I finished shoveling the deck and snowblowing in preparation of this refrigerator delivery, the truck pulled up to the house.  That was perfect timing since it was still snowing fairly heavily.  If they had arrived later in the day I would have had to do more shoveling and snowblowing.

I actually had to supply the delivery guys with a few tools.  I guess they accidentally left some tools at their previous delivery.  They hand-connected the water supply but I tightened it with my channel-locks while they moved on to some other assembly.  After they left, I ensured the new refrigerator was level and then I adjusted the doors so they were even with each other. 

We needed to wait about two hours before powering it up because they had laid the fridge on its side (or back) while taking it out of the truck.  After two hours, we plugged it in and then I went to work on getting the water dispenser running.  We had to flush it with three gallons of water so that took some time.  

After doing that, I calibrated the measuring of water coming from the dispenser.  Each time we go to the water dispenser for water, if we so desire, we can set a specific amount of ounces for the refrigerator to dispense.  I guess this might come in handy for measuring water for recipes.  I don't know how accurate it is though.  It might just be easier to eyeball it and then adjust as we always have in the past.  Time will tell.  

Before powering it on, I started removing all the protective plastic inside the fridge as well as all the tape.  There was so much protective plastic and tape that this took me about 20 minutes to accomplish!  After everything was free and clear of packing, plastic and tape, we plugged in the new fridge.  Now we just needed to wait for the temperature to drop inside the fridge before moving everything from our unheated and cold storage room to the new fridge.  

After dinner, we started putting things back into the fridge.  We're holding off on the freezer until tomorrow.  Hmmm...  at the moment, I don't remember why we decided to hold off on moving our meat from being secured outside in coolers to the freezer.  I think we just forgot about it.  I think I should check the weather forecast for tonight to make sure we don't get temperatures above freezing otherwise I'll have to take care of that tonight rather than wait until morning.  

Personally, I'm not too fond of this new refrigerator.  It seems rather cheaply made.  Then again, our previous refrigerator seemed like very high quality and it didn't last more than a few years so how a refrigerator "seems" might not matter much.  Regardless, it feels cheap and nobody wants a nice new expensive appliance to feel cheap.  The controls feel cheap.  The water dispenser seems cheap.  The shelves seem cheap.  We'll see how long this thing lasts.  My bet is it won't last more than 5-7 years...  which is absolutely pathetic.  

Our previous refrigerator was a French door model with a separate refrigerated drawer between the freezer at the bottom and the refrigerator at the top.  That drawer came in very handy for canned drinks.  

I guess our one complaint about the freezer drawer at the bottom was that the drawer made it difficult to access most things in the freezer.  We ended up just having most everything piled into the big drawer.  There was a smaller drawer at the top of the main freezer drawer but that didn't hold much.  Every time we needed something out of the freezer, we needed to dig for it.  We'll see how much we like this new side-by-side model instead.  I already know that my spinal injuries are not going to like having to bend for some refrigerated items but, on the other hand, I won't have to bend for some freezer items now.  

We also would have preferred to get a black stainless finish.  Unfortunately, we would have had to wait months for a black stainless model.  We needed a refrigerator as soon as possible though so our choices were significantly limited.  What I found odd is that the black stainless models were significantly higher in price too...  upwards of $700 higher which is about 50% higher!

So, we ended up with a significantly less expensive side-by-side, which we didn't really want...  we ended up with a new refrigerator with a rather cheap-feeling quality, which we didn't want...  we ended up with stainless, which we didn't particularly want...  I just hope this refrigerator lasts 20 years or more...   which I'm not too optimistic about right now.

At least we have the modern convenience of a refrigerator again.