Replacing our Clunker Refrigerator - the saga continues

Soon the moment of truth came when the refrigerator was delivered. The old refrigerator was moved out of our kitchen and into our garage so that it could be picked up by our utility company who was going to recycle it for us. Our utility company offered a small rebate for buying an energy star qualified refrigerator and another small rebate for having it recycled.

When the new refrigerator was slid into the open space of our old refrigerator we found out that it was a little wider and a little taller than our old refrigerator, but that it will fit with the removal of some of the "trim" on the bottom of the cabinet above the refrigerator. Well removing the "trim" was easier said than done since these cabinets are over 60 years old and are solid wood. It took several hours of chiseling and smoothing out and shaving off the heads of nails and such, but we careful removed enough of the "trim" without causing any real damage to the cabinet or leaving the cabinet unsupported.


The end result was worth it to us. We got a beautiful new side-by-side refrigerator with ice and water in the door, complete with a lock for the ice and water. That being said there is no way that a bigger refrigerator would ever fit in that space without removing cabinets so we will enjoy our version of a jumbo refrigerator and just feel spoiled as if this were the biggest refrigerator ever, because for us this is the biggest refrigerator ever to fit in this house.

Foothills Green Expo

Today we went to the first ever Foothills Green Expo which was hosted at Pacific Outdoor Living and was co-hosted with Phat Energy. Let me just say that I was really impressed by this very small green expo. The amount of services these two companies offer is rather astonishing. We are getting very excited about working on our yard now, previously I think we were a bit nervous about the whole thing though we were slowly figuring out what we wanted to do with the yard. Today these two companies just helped us to see how to really kick up the green in our yard way beyond what we had imagined.

Pacific Outdoor Living offers tons of services. They will even come out to your house and help you design your yard as well as what order things need to be done in and help you keep it all in your budget. We were most excited by the way that they can put your water storage underground and then put either a water feature or a permeable paver patio deck on top of the water storage area. I know it sounds a little confusing so I really recommend if you are intrigued by this look at their website or call them or even go down there and talk to them in person. You will be amazed at this, so cool not to need to have rain barrels all over the yard to store water for irrigation of the yard.

Phat Energy had these super cool Phatports. They are structures similar to a pergola style patio cover but they have solar panels on the roof area. You can use these as carports, patios, etc. We are really excited about the possibility of putting one in our backyard to cover our patio area. We had thought previously about an umbrella or a sail canopy or possibly even building a pergola style patio cover. This is super exciting though to think of having a covered patio that produces electricity to help offset our electrical usage.

the storage cabinet in the laundry room

This was a fun situation to remedy. This cabinet has a good few inches on either side of the cabinet that is completely empty, but has a "face plate" to cover the space from the front - thereby making it real easy to lose things in these pockets of space. Yes, I did discover these pockets of space when I went to store something above the cabinet and it fell into the pocket of space. Luckily my husband managed to get it out of there for me, but this left me to figure out an elegant solution to this little problem we had discovered.

As I was cleaning up the front bedroom, currently known as our storage room while we are unpacking, I was looking for somewhere to put these two sets of little drawers so I brought them out to the laundry room actually thinking I might mount them below the storage cabinet. Then I realized that they may work for our needs just as well if I put them above the cabinet. Lo and behold not only did they fit well up there, but due to their size it also solved the problem of that empty space on each side of the cabinet. There was just enough space in between the two sets of drawers to fit our new phone book. I love it when things just work out, and I love it even more when it is such a simple yet elegant solution.