The appliances in my house have gotten wind of the coming kitchen renovation and are apparently staging a slow motion suicide pact in protest, with a sympathy gesture from the laundry room. (My only oven died in early April. It's becoming clear that the microwave is not long for this world. And the dryer blew an internal fuse last night.)

So I was talking to my appliance repair guy. He's taken good care of us for the nearly 15 years we've been in the house. I wanted his perspective on brands, pro and con.

Well, to start with, what he has in his kitchen and what he'd recommend to me are:

SZ refrigerator
Bosch DW
Thermador oven and cooktop

He says he's had them for 5 years and hasn't had problems with any of them.

I have a very fancy appliance repair guy.

I said I wasn't in that budget range, didn't want a built-in fridge and, for various reasons, preferred the layout of the racks in a KA dishwasher to the rack in a Bosch.

He provides warranty service for a number of companies, including Thermador, Bosch and GE. He also services pretty much everything else. Except he won't service Samsung. So few people have Samsung appliances around here and getting parts is such an unbelievable hassle, that he just won't do it. He says I'll have trouble finding anyone to service a Samsung appliance. (The closest service center listed on the Samsung website is 33 miles away, in the next state, across the Hudson River. So I see his point.)

So this rather puts a damper on my plans to buy a Samsung refrigerator. If the problem was just getting service during the warranty period, I'd probably be willing to make the bet that I won't need service during that time. But I'm not willing to bet that I'll never need service and if I need an appliance serviced, I want it done by this guy, since I trust him.

If I must have a standard depth refrigerator, he recommends GE for quality, good service and available parts and says LG is ok from a service pov. Hmm. Based on reviews here, I'm still leaning towards an LG if I'm rejecting the Samsung, but I'll look at it all again. He services LG and does warranty service for GE.

He'd still rather see me buy a Bosch DW, but the KA passes muster, but he points out that their warranty service sucks.

He seems reasonably approving of my plans for a Bosch oven and cooktop. I forgot to ask him his opinions on induction and whether he's qualified to work on induction, but he'll be back in a couple of days with the part for my dryer, so I'll ask then.

I hope all this is helpful to someone.