Our Secret Weekend Project

A couple weeks ago, I had some spoiled pineapple. A few days later, some spoiled milk. After that, spoiled milk again. And I had noticed my top shelf items were freezing. Can you see where I'm going with this? My fridge was on the outs. I gave Carl the awesome unfortunate news. At the time I thought, hey this isn't so bad! I will actually get to pick out an appliance for the kitchen seeing as the house came with them 3.5 years ago. But then Carl dropped a small bomb. We needed to replace the dishwasher too. The inside was starting to rust out which is no good. OK...we can deal with that. But then the debate started. Do we just get the fridge and dishwasher and stick with white? Neither of us were thrilled about that idea. We both like the look of stainless steel better. But then that means we're replacing everything.

I'll save you the long talks and debates.


We decided to go with new stainless steel appliances. I was pretty stoked. I had never picked out an appliance before. The kitchen appliances as well as the washer and dryer were chosen for me by the previous owners. We checked Lowe's, Home Depot and Best Buy. We also checked some online avenues, but that wasn't the way to go for us. We are tactile folks. We also debated over gas or electric. We debated over a standard microwave or a convection style microwave. There was a lot of debating going on in the Happy Household. You would have thought we were going for the 2011 Debate Team Championship up in here. Nope, just a husband and a wife trying to figure out what worked for their lifestyle and kitchen.

In the end, we went with all Samsung appliances from Best Buy. All the stores price match, so it was a matter of availability to us. The ratings were great, we loved the look and functionality.


I'll do a quick overview of our old appliances vs. the new ones!

Old Oven:
Electric, 4 burner

New Oven:
Convection Electric with 2 induction burners, kid safe with no knobs

Old Microwave:
Honestly, a $60 Black Friday special we snagged because the original microwave died and we weren't sure what the future held for our kitchen. It was really, really loud.

New Microwave:
Convection option microwave- quiet. Did I mention it was quiet? This also means we can get rid of our monstrosity of a toaster oven as this appliance does double duty! Plus, it essentially means I have two ovens for when I need more baking space.


Old Dishwasher:
Shortest tub in the world, I'm certain. Also wins for loudest dishwasher, ever.

New Dishwasher:
Practically silent, HUGE tub with sanitize, delayed start and other cycle options. Again, no outer dials making it kid safe.


Old Refrigerator:
Side by side, counter depth noisy little bugger, not to mention failing at it's life purpose

New Refrigerator:
French door, bottom freezer counter depth (a must for our "cozy" kitchen). Ice and water in top door. Super quiet, with power cool function.

Carl installed everything himself, saving us a little money there. They are all also Energy Star appliances, so we are running a much more efficient kitchen on top of all the new features. I couldn't be happier with our choices! And now this week will be a major kitchen week. I'll be figuring out the best configuration for the very different fridge style and purging and reorganizing our cabinets, trying to make the space we have more functional than ever! If you have any questions about why we chose what we chose, feel free to ask!

We still have another DIY big project we started this weekend, timing is everything around here! So I'll be working on finishing that up so I can share it with you all!