More Appliance Festivities!

Yes, it's appliance replacement time AGAIN.  The past year has been a veritable appliance festival at our house.  UGH.  

If you've been reading along this past year, you'll find that we've replaced the washing machine (JUST as the pandemic shut down all appliance deliveries), the range, the dryer, the garbage disposer, and now, for the piece de resistance, the refrigerator.

Truthfully, I was sort of expecting it, since I knew it was more than ten years old, which seems to be the expiration date for appliances these days.  It's been a real champ, though, keeping things super cold without a hitch.

But last week, it seemed to be dispensing ice slowly.  Just a few half-moons at a time.  What the what?  And I'd noticed a kind of humming and sort of popping sound when I was standing near it - a lot like the sound of a pan on the stovetop just starting to come to a boil, even though nothing was on the stovetop.  Hmmmmmm...

I finally looked inside the ice bin.  It was nearly empty!  I looked at the ice maker, and there were half-moons of ice suspended, just at the point of falling into the bin, but they weren't going anywhere.  I knocked them into the bin and felt all around inside the ice maker as far I could.  No new ice.  The water dispenser did its job, so it wasn't a blockage in the water line.  

Here's the old fridge.  It doesn't
look too bad for eighteen does it?

So, I did an internet search, read articles, and watched videos.  It would appear the ice maker's motor was kaput.  I looked into parts (solenoids) and total replacement, and then That Man came in and asked what was going on.  I told him, and he asked how old the refrigerator was, and I said somewhere around eleven, but I could check the sticker inside the refrigerator compartment.

IT WAS EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD!!!  

Well!

Don't judge me (well, you can if you want to, I guess), but I decided I didn't want to play silly games with an appliance that old.  I could just see it - we'd order the parts, wait a few days to get them, go through the rigamarole of installing them, and a month or six later, the fridge would die.  Nope.  Not going there.

I ordered a new one.

Now you KNOW that we can't seem to do the appliance thing the easy way - oh no, not us!  So it came, the delivery guys hauled out the old white box and brought in the new stainless steel one, then told us that they couldn't hook up the ice maker because we had a copper water line and they weren't allowed to hook it to copper tubing.  So the new fridge sat awkwardly in the middle of the kitchen floor while we hooked it up ourselves.  

That Knee still isn't one hundred percent healed up yet, although it's doing well (YAY!).  But getting on the floor was not an option.  I was the one who got to crawl around under the sink to turn off the water to the refrigerator.  He had a hard enough time just standing between the fridge and the wall, getting the fittings on the copper tubing to join it to the ice maker hose.  Of course, it leaked at first, so the water had to be shut off AGAIN and adjustments made.

Long story short, we got it done, and it's dispensing water and making ice!  PLUS, it's keeping our food cold - HA!

And for the first time in a LO-O-O-O-O-O-O-NG time, all our kitchen appliances match - so spiffy!

Of course, I'd shoved the food from the old fridge into coolers that morning, and in the evening, I just kind of threw the food into the new refrigerator wherever it would fit, so it's all going to need rearranging.  

But that's a job for another day.