home depot stainless steel refrigerators

While it’s extremely important to know where to shut off your breaker, water line and even gas line, it’s the connections from those main sources of utilities to your appliances that will cause your biggest headaches.

With the tangible shiny things out of the way, let’s talk about the less obvious factors that lie hidden in your home: utility lines ( and no, not the power lines running to your house). Want to see what I found with the plumbing? Way Out Of Line Little dishwashers were more expensive when this was installed!!! What were they thinking? Thunder Cats are go. I popped the filler board out and measured the space… 24.75″. The width needed to accommodate a full-sized dishwasher is 24″. Someone blocked off part of the under counter frame, shaved down a drawer and then haphazardly installed the pint sized cleaner ( that would tip out if you had a loaded top rack extended). The funny thing is… a full sized dishwasher would have absolutely fit in the space. Our realtor laughed when she saw it, but we were excited for a kitchen with an actual dishwasher. We have this beautiful kitchen with stamped tin back splashes, granite counter tops… and a mismatched tiny dishwasher shoved in the corner. The unit is 18″ across and it best serves a household consisting of an old lady and her 15 cats. Have you ever seen a tiny dishwasher before? And no, not the time you put your toddler to work washing dishes and had a good laugh at their cuteness. But now we come to the kitchen layout paradox that is probably more unique to us than helpful to you, but bare with me a sec. If you were worried, most of these appliance brands typically have a matching product line. While you’re at it, don’t forget that you’re probably going to need a range hood or an under cabinet mounted microwave to ventilate your cooking surface. So while it was annoying… it wasn’t a deal breaker. In our case, the oven door had to be opened in order to get into the drawer that holds our oven mitts. The real moment of truth comes down to how far the handle sticks out and does it impede the opening and closing of other appliances or drawers. You get about 30″ of clearance in width with a little variance on the depth. With your fridge picked out, the good news about a gas range or oven is that they are fairly standard in size with most models. Oh and… a refrigerator with a K-Cup dispenser? You temptress you. Don’t get blinded by the new fancy finishes like GE’s Black Slate until you know the appliance will actually fit. Guess how many refrigerators are wider than the space we have allotted for our fridge space ( or even the door way to our kitchen)? Easily 75-80% of them! So step 1, measure once, measure twice and then measure again and start your search with those parameters in place. In our case, I had everything all picked out… until I measured. When it comes to replacing an appliance suite I absolutely recommend starting with the refrigerator because it is 100% the elephant in the room that will determine the rest of your appliances. The refrigerator even blocks the light switch for the room ( thank you Smart Home upgrade for assistance there!). Our current fridge sits obtrusively between the doorway to the kitchen and a counter top next to our oven. When you’re replacing existing appliances in an established floor plan, it’s not as easy as just pointing to a fridge and saying “that one please!” Aside from the obvious budget, there are plenty of other important factors like dimensions and space to consider. To see the grand reveal of our new kitchen you’ll need to head over to The Home Depot Blog! A Planned (Kitchen) Attack This post has been sponsored by The Home Depot and is part one of a two part series.

Luckily, I’m here to walk you through it! Before this experience, I could not have told you that more consideration and planning goes into an appliance upgrade than a car purchase ( who knew). So when my friends at Home Depot asked me if I wanted to team up for an appliance upgrade post I jumped at the opportunity. Fast forward to present day with a growing family ( bambino #2 is on the way!) and we’ve finally figured out what does and does not work in our kitchen.

So any appliances were an upgrade to what we were accustomed to.

We came from a tiny apartment with no dishwasher, a range that smelled like a gas leak and a fridge that sometimes kept things cold… all in a kitchen that might have been smaller than a twin sized mattress. When my wife and I bought our first house almost a decade ago ( wow, has it been that long?) appliances weren’t at the top of our necessity list when placing our final offer ( although the hot tub did convince me).

Home depot stainless steel refrigerators