(Mis)adventures with refrigerators

I have to give a special shout-out to Lawdog and Old NFO.  Last night they went above and beyond the call of friendship to try to put together our refrigerator, which is large enough that it had to be disassembled to remove it from our old home and get it into our new one.

Trouble is, the hinges at the bottom of the doors had to be removed completely;  but getting them back on was a bit of a nightmare, as they required the insertion of screws that needed someone to lie on the floor in front of the fridge and negotiate some fiddly angles to get them in and tightened.  With my fused spine this was a non-starter for me, and Miss D.'s physical restrictions meant the same thing for her;  so we had to rely on our friends to do the fiddly bits for us.  They worked for over an hour, but still couldn't get the doors to close as smoothly and easily as they should, despite some... interesting...  additions they provided to our vocabulary.

We suspect that either the doors or the body of the fridge may have become warped or bent during the move.  We can't say for sure, but I'll call in a repair technician to take a look and tell us what's happened.  If the fridge can be salvaged, even at the cost of greater care and attention when closing it (and making sure it stays closed), we'll do that, because our budget is overstretched right now with other moving expenses.  If not, well, I guess a replacement fridge is in our immediate future whether we like it or not.  Craigslist, here we come!  (Lawdog has already suggested taking the old one up to Blogorado in October, filling it with Tannerite or something else suitably explosive, and shooting at it from a safe distance.  Anyone would think he dislikes our fridge for some reason!)

I guess the lesson learned from my point of view is to make sure that in future, we buy appliances that, fully assembled and operational, are no wider in one dimension (either side-to-side or front-to-back) than a standard internal door frame (which I think is 30 inches [76.2 centimeters] in most of the USA);  and also to make sure that it's compact enough to maneuver around or through tight spaces such as turns in corridors, or two doors set close together at a sharp angle to each other.  If the appliance has to be disassembled to get it through a door or a tight space like that, the odds are pretty good that it may not go back together again exactly as it was before.  I suppose repeated disassembly and reassembly make that more likely;  this is the second time we've moved this fridge, so it may be that there's a cumulative effect to removing and reattaching the hinges.

Those of you planning the purchase of new appliances might want to keep that in mind.

Peter