When I moved into this house 15 years ago there was nothing here. We spent a long 6 weeks getting this house into a livable condition. This included, but not limited to, adding outlets, patching walls, painting walls and ceilings, stripping paint from woodwork, painting the tub (don’t ask!), and new carpeting. And part of moving out for the first time is that you don’t have anything. So my girlfriend at the time and I had to go out and buy living room furniture, a kitchen table, and a washer & dryer. As a huge help to us my Nanny bought us a refrigerator and stove for the house.
That was 15 years ago. The average lifespan of a modern appliance is about 8 years. We have been living on borrowed time.
I got a text from my wife while at work on Sunday that the fridge had a funky smell to it and that from what research she had done, the smell was from a burned out defrost motor. In short, the fridge was dying and we needed a new one. I knew this day was going to come, I just didn’t expect it to be 2 weeks after we dropped $1400 to get the Volkswagen out of Virginia. But we’re Shafers — we’re used to this kinda shit!
So we set out after I got home in search for a new fridge. We hit up the usual suspects when I suddenly remembered on the way to Home Depot that a new Sears Outlet store had just opened up. We headed there next and looked around. While there were some very nice fridges there, most of them that were the size we needed (physically) and within our price range, were mostly scratch & dent models. We found one that came in under our budget that wasn’t all that beat up. It had a few scratches and for some reason, red paint on the side. We knew we could get the paint off and for the price I could live with a few scratches. But doing due diligence, we continued our search. At the end of the day, we headed back to the outlet store to look one more time since most of the fridges we found were not even close to our price range for what we were getting.
On our second go around, Jess found a fridge that she fell in love with. It was larger then what we were looking for, but taking its measurements, I knew I could make it work with some modifications to the kitchen. The unit was stainless steel instead of white, and it had the freezer on the bottom. She instantly fell in love with it.
Looking it over the fridge was in immaculate condition. There were no scratches, no dents, and most of the accessories (drawers, bins, etc.) we still held down by factory tape. In fact, the power plug was still factory sealed. This sucker was never used. Looking at the price though, it was more then what we wanted to spend. But then again, we were getting it for 50% off. We talked about it for awhile and she was totally in love with it. She told me it was the exact fridge she wanted.
We flagged over a salesperson and began to talk business. We talked about the unit for awhile and then about financing since that would be the only way we could walk away with this unit today. We could have waited until payday on Friday, but what are the chances it would still be there by then? The financing they offered was through their Sears Card. I didn’t have once since I paid off all of my credit card debt years ago, but back when I worked at Sears in the late 90s I did have one. So I told him to sign me up for one.
Jess and the kids went to look around while I did all of the paperwork. After a few minutes the register printed out my temporary card number. He then told me that with their special Grand Opening sale, everything was an extra 10% off the sticker price. He then added that any purchase over $299 was an additional 5% off on top of the 10%. Oh yeah! And if I used the card today since I just opened it up, I would get 6 months no interest. Cha-ching! I smiled and called to my wife. She looked up from some clothes she was looking at and I simply said, “Do you want it?” She smiled and replied, “Yes!”. I looked at the salesperson and told him we would take it. About 15 minutes later, all of the paperwork was written up and signed, the fridge was ours, and my dad was on his way up with his truck and cart so we could get it home and save us the $82 delivery fee.
When we got home we knew the kitchen would have to change since this was quite a bit larger then our old unit. We had to move the stove over to where the old fridge was, remove 2 wall cabinets above where the stove was, and that gave us just enough room to slide the fridge in. Well…not quite. We had to move our 15 year old pantry cabinet (notice a theme here?) over by about 2 inches. Well, the bastard literally disintegrated as soon as we tried to move it. We moved it, but now it’s being held together with duct tape while we look for a new one. It’s always something…
All in all though, I am very happy with our purchase. I was even more happy when we went to put it into its spot and we saw what the original retail price of it was. We ended up getting it for about 60% off of retail price. Sweet!
So here is the new fridge in its new home. Now there is no trim on the unit yet as we still have to move things around and level the floor underneath it, something I had to do years ago for our old fridge when it was in that spot. Once everything is complete, all of the trim pieces will go back on and we’ll be done!
