It was Saturday morning. Sylvia had an errand to run in Ionia, the county seat and about twenty minutes away. She asked, “Do you want to come and check out refrigerators?”

 

I’m not a morning person. I used to do okay, but since retirement my adreneline levels must be low. At least that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Half way there, I realized that I hadn’t measured the space that was available. Not a problem. Right? Wrong! Oh well, we were only going to look.

It had started earlier last week when the water dispenser in the door stopped delivering water. Inconvenient, but not a problem. Two steps away there was the tap for filtered (drinking) water at the sink. The ice maker still worked and dispensed ice without a problem. No worries.

Sylvia completed her errand and we stopped next door at Sears. We seem to always end up there when we buy appliances. We usually check around and end up buying from Sears. Once we got over the sticker shock, we haven’t bought a fridge in a very long time, we started looking.

We moved into our present home in 2000. There was a side-by-side refrigerator-freezer. We never did like that format. The insulating wall up the middle removes a lot of valuable space. It also leaves the fridge very cramped.

We wanted a unit with the freezer on the bottom. There were plenty of choices. We saw a unit with the Kenmore (Sears) brand. It looked good and we made some notes and talked with a sales rep.

Then we drove to the edge of town (heading home) and stopped at Lowes. There we found a unit that was attractive and had all the features we wanted. Being only 32-5/8 inch wide, it should fit into the space available. And they had two in stock. The sales rep printed out an info sheet for us and we returned home.

The first thing I did was measure the width available. Only 31-1/2 inch and no way I could widen the opening. The units that we were considering would not work because of their width.

No worries. No hurry. We prepared and ate lunch. A couple of hours later, we discovered that the ice maker no longer worked. Now this was serious.

After lunch I went online and began searching. Lowes’ Website is useful and lists the products with full info. To discover dimensions meant a series of clicks for each product. It would take forever! I visited one of their competitors and they had no (as in zero) product information. They would tell me where to find their nearest outlet — I already know. They are located across the street from Lowes.

Sears’ Website is far superior. I found refrigerators, and limited it to “freezer on the bottom.” Then in the left column of the page clicked on maximum width. With a minimum of fuss, I discovered there was one model available in a choice of four finishes.

We weren’t able to get out later on Saturday and won’t go shopping on Sunday. Monday (yesterday) morning Sylvia dragged me to Lowes. (Not really — I drove. Did I mention I’m not a morning person?) There was one choice that met our requirements and while the price was attractive, the unit was not. Enameled wire baskets slide along plastic to open the bins. Excuse me, but cheap and tacky is the best I can say of it. I don’t want to think about convenience or durability.

We knew what we were looking for at Sears. We didn’t see the model that we were interested in. The sales rep said they had one in black (wrong color) if we didn’t mind going out in the warehouse. He had to move a couple of washers and a dryer out of the way. There it was. No water dispenser, and that’s not a problem. Latches and slides and other design features were very well ijmplemented. We now have a 20 cubic foot LG fridge on order. The problem is we have to wait a week for delivery. I’m trying not to think about it.