French door counter depth fridge advice

10 years ago

Hi all,
We just moved into a new house with a not great kitchen, which we are fixing. We bought a new bosch 800 dx dw, love it!, and an electrolux slide in induction range, like it and would say love it if it didn't look so odd. My counter tops are short, due to a new hw floor, and the slide in has an overhang that isn't flush. Knew from this site that this could happen and will address it with contractor, but still a bit of a bummer.

Now we've decided to buy a counter depth French door fridge and to move the old standard one to the garage.We will turn the fridge space into cabinets and countertop because the kitchen is short on both. The new fridge will be in a tight spot and I need a very shallow one to fit. Does anyone have recos for shallow fd fridges? Would love to hear what you think. I would prefer no external water or ice and freestanding is better. I assume freestanding means the sides will be finished in ss?

Thanks so much!

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Comments (4)

User
10 years ago
No, freestanding means not built into the cabinets like a SubZero where it's part of the cabinetry. Stainless sides are about 1K extra if you can find a fridge with them. Not many have that because not many people want the sides exposed. That's why doing cabinet panels on the sides has become more popular. Don't confuse that with being built in. The fridge still rolls in and out of the cabinet cubby like that. Or you can do stainless aftermarket applied panels for the sides, but again, that's another 1K or so.

Counter depth isn't built in. It's doors and handles still stick out at least 6" from the adjacent cabinets. If you have very tight clearances, you may need built in to work. That's a whole magnitude of expense greater than counter depth. And counter depth is at least 1K more than standard depth in most brands.

Kitchenaid or LG or Samsung would be my recommendations for counter depth.
clarabelled
Original Author
10 years ago
Thanks so much! It sounds like it could actually be cheaper to do a cabinet around the fridge. I was thinking lg or ka so thanks for the recos. I'm wondering how terrible it will be to have not much clearance and what the absolute minimum acceptable clearance in front of the fridge is. Also, how much space do you need behind the fridge for it to breathe? That may end up being a deal breaker for me and my new fridge dreams!
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subonim
10 years ago
Electrolux makes some really nice CD FD fridges. Check out Electrolux EI23BC80K

Build.com has pretty good pricing too. I think this is what I'm going with in our new build.
live_wire_oak
10 years ago
You should post your layout on the Kitchen Forum to be able get more opinions of your planned changes. At a minimum though, you've got to have at least 36" in front of a fridge to be able to get in and out of it's location. That's pretty tight though for the businest spot in the kitchen. I like to have a minimum of 42" in front of a fridge, and 48" is better. If the fridge is located across a busy walkway, like the main path into the house from outside, then even 48" isn't really enough to let people with gym bags or groceries past someone standing there with the door open.