Friday Night Freezer Follies
Jan. 24th, 2022 12:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
msconductMy freezer is very, very ancient. So ancient the brand that used to make it no longer exists. And over the last few months it's been dying by degrees.
I tried to have it fixed, but tried in vain. After wasting $600 on this fruitless endeavour, I had to face the fact that it was time for me and my freezer to break up. And that was a horrible tragedy.
Why not just buy a new freezer in the first place, you ask? Several reasons, really. First of all, freezer sizes have changed since I last bought one. They're now narrow and really tall, which meant that to fit it in, I would have to take out a shelf above my current freezer. A shelf stuffed with things I really need and which I have no room to relocate.
Worse than that, freezer design has changed in another way too. My old freezer has sensible wire shelves, but new freezers have silly little plastic baskets instead. Even if I wanted to rummage around in a stupid basket instead of just whisking something off a shelf, the space I have to fit the freezer into is pretty narrow, and I doubted whether I would be able to open a freezer door far enough to slide a basket out.
Hence my $600 freezer failed resuscitation bill. I was forced to accept that I was going to have to send my old freezer to live on a farm and buy a new one.
I won't bore you with the endless hours I spent looking for freezers available in New Zealand that would fit into the space I had, but trust me, it was agonising. After weeks of research, I literally could not find a single freezer that would fit. Actually, I did find one, and I was ecstatic. I was about to press buy, when I realised that Google had misdirected me not to a New Zealand home appliance store, but to its parent store in Australia.
This is one of the problems of living in a small country. If a manufacturer makes a range of eight things, we might get two here, and they'll be twice the price they are overseas. It didn't help, either, that like everyone else New Zealand has massive shortages of white goods at the moment. Several brands simply had no freezers available in New Zealand at all.
Then I had what I thought was a brilliant idea. I could buy a commercial freezer! They still have wire shelves. They aren't frost free, but I thought that was a reasonable trade. After extensive research I found the perfect thing and was again about to press the buy button when I came across a review on a site I'd had to dig hard through Google to find. And the review mentioned the noise of the compressor. "Like a microwave", it said. Like a microwave? I did not want that running most of the time in my kitchen. I had to put my dreams of shelves behind me and resign myself to baskets.
I don't know why I decided to re-measure the space I had for the freezer. I think I was hoping it would have miraculously changed shape. And much to my delight, it had! The measurement were different to the ones I'd taken before, and as a result, I would now be able to buy my first preference, a Miele freezer. (Actually, the Miele freezer, as they only supply one freestanding freezer to New Zealand. Le sigh.)
I'm a bit of a Miele fangirl. My Miele dishwasher is so quiet guests think I've forgotten to turn it on. My Miele stick vacuum is light to use, doesn't have the horrible trigger grip many stick vacuums do, and stands up by itself, which turns out to be far more useful than you might think. Basically, Miele makes quiet, well-designed and well-made appliances, and as far as I can tell, they're about the last brand you can say that about.
Needless to say, even Miele puts baskets in its freezers. However, when I was reading through the manual pre-purchase, I discovered that if you wanted to make more room in the freezer to freeze something big, you could take out a basket and glass shelf below it and....hold on. Glass shelves? It has glass shelves? Yes, the manual said. They even take more weight than the baskets. So I could just take the baskets out altogether? Nothing in the manual said I couldn't.
Joy! I finally pressed buy.
A day later, I discovered there was one tiny, teeny problem.
My measurements were wrong.
When I measured the width of the pantry doorway opening I needed to get the freezer through, I'd thought it was 605mm. Measured more carefully, it was 600mm.
Width of new freezer? 600mm.
AAAARRRRGH!
Madly flipping through the manual, I discovered to my great relief that if I took the door of the freezer off, which I was going to have to do anyway to change the side of the hinge, I should be able to slither it sideways through the door opening with a couple of centimetres to spare. I let the order stand. The price of this was a lot of sleepless nights worrying about whether it would work out, but at least this way I would have a freezer. Probably.
And those sleepless nights were plentiful, as the freezer sat in the distribution centre for twelve days. I finally called Miele and got the loveliest customer service guy ever, who was furious on my behalf and sent the distribution centre an incendiary email. He even promised to send me someone to help with the installation if I couldn't do it on my own. Did I mention I love Miele?
The courier company sent me a text within the hour, confirming delivery the next day between 12 and 5. Great! Less great was that it actually arrived at 7.30 that morning when we weren't ready for it and they left the 90kg package on the deck. This was actually less infuriating than you might imagine, because courier companies in New Zealand are awful and this was totally par for the course. Fortunately I have a wheeled trolley for this kind of sitch and my housemate and I managed to get the thing inside at least. This was last Friday, and we left it boxed up in the hall with the intention of tackling the actual install at the weekend.
However, at 9 p.m., I decided it was now or never. I didn't want one more sleepless night: I wanted to get the bloody thing over with.
And I did. It took three hours, which was approximately three times as long as I thought it would, and it was exhausting and sweaty work on a far too hot summer night, but I removed the handle, took the door off, reversed the hingeing, measured the freezer and thought I might be able to get it through the doorway widthways after all, put the door on, tried to get it through the doorway, could not get it through the doorway, resolved never to measure anything ever again, took the door off again, got the freezer through the door sideways, put the door back on and attached the handle. And took the bloody baskets out. Here it is in its just-big-enough space:
And now I have a working freezer! At last! It has shelves! It has a light! (Why does nobody else do this?) And I can indeed open the door far enough to slide out baskets, which is just as well as you have to leave the lowest one in and the highest one doesn't have a shelf below it. I hated every minute of this difficult and stressful experience from go to whoa, but I can't help feeling a quiet little glow of pride that despite all the hurdles (some of my own making) I got it done.
I tried to have it fixed, but tried in vain. After wasting $600 on this fruitless endeavour, I had to face the fact that it was time for me and my freezer to break up. And that was a horrible tragedy.
Why not just buy a new freezer in the first place, you ask? Several reasons, really. First of all, freezer sizes have changed since I last bought one. They're now narrow and really tall, which meant that to fit it in, I would have to take out a shelf above my current freezer. A shelf stuffed with things I really need and which I have no room to relocate.
Worse than that, freezer design has changed in another way too. My old freezer has sensible wire shelves, but new freezers have silly little plastic baskets instead. Even if I wanted to rummage around in a stupid basket instead of just whisking something off a shelf, the space I have to fit the freezer into is pretty narrow, and I doubted whether I would be able to open a freezer door far enough to slide a basket out.
Hence my $600 freezer failed resuscitation bill. I was forced to accept that I was going to have to send my old freezer to live on a farm and buy a new one.
I won't bore you with the endless hours I spent looking for freezers available in New Zealand that would fit into the space I had, but trust me, it was agonising. After weeks of research, I literally could not find a single freezer that would fit. Actually, I did find one, and I was ecstatic. I was about to press buy, when I realised that Google had misdirected me not to a New Zealand home appliance store, but to its parent store in Australia.
This is one of the problems of living in a small country. If a manufacturer makes a range of eight things, we might get two here, and they'll be twice the price they are overseas. It didn't help, either, that like everyone else New Zealand has massive shortages of white goods at the moment. Several brands simply had no freezers available in New Zealand at all.
Then I had what I thought was a brilliant idea. I could buy a commercial freezer! They still have wire shelves. They aren't frost free, but I thought that was a reasonable trade. After extensive research I found the perfect thing and was again about to press the buy button when I came across a review on a site I'd had to dig hard through Google to find. And the review mentioned the noise of the compressor. "Like a microwave", it said. Like a microwave? I did not want that running most of the time in my kitchen. I had to put my dreams of shelves behind me and resign myself to baskets.
I don't know why I decided to re-measure the space I had for the freezer. I think I was hoping it would have miraculously changed shape. And much to my delight, it had! The measurement were different to the ones I'd taken before, and as a result, I would now be able to buy my first preference, a Miele freezer. (Actually, the Miele freezer, as they only supply one freestanding freezer to New Zealand. Le sigh.)
I'm a bit of a Miele fangirl. My Miele dishwasher is so quiet guests think I've forgotten to turn it on. My Miele stick vacuum is light to use, doesn't have the horrible trigger grip many stick vacuums do, and stands up by itself, which turns out to be far more useful than you might think. Basically, Miele makes quiet, well-designed and well-made appliances, and as far as I can tell, they're about the last brand you can say that about.
Needless to say, even Miele puts baskets in its freezers. However, when I was reading through the manual pre-purchase, I discovered that if you wanted to make more room in the freezer to freeze something big, you could take out a basket and glass shelf below it and....hold on. Glass shelves? It has glass shelves? Yes, the manual said. They even take more weight than the baskets. So I could just take the baskets out altogether? Nothing in the manual said I couldn't.
Joy! I finally pressed buy.
A day later, I discovered there was one tiny, teeny problem.
My measurements were wrong.
When I measured the width of the pantry doorway opening I needed to get the freezer through, I'd thought it was 605mm. Measured more carefully, it was 600mm.
Width of new freezer? 600mm.
AAAARRRRGH!
Madly flipping through the manual, I discovered to my great relief that if I took the door of the freezer off, which I was going to have to do anyway to change the side of the hinge, I should be able to slither it sideways through the door opening with a couple of centimetres to spare. I let the order stand. The price of this was a lot of sleepless nights worrying about whether it would work out, but at least this way I would have a freezer. Probably.
And those sleepless nights were plentiful, as the freezer sat in the distribution centre for twelve days. I finally called Miele and got the loveliest customer service guy ever, who was furious on my behalf and sent the distribution centre an incendiary email. He even promised to send me someone to help with the installation if I couldn't do it on my own. Did I mention I love Miele?
The courier company sent me a text within the hour, confirming delivery the next day between 12 and 5. Great! Less great was that it actually arrived at 7.30 that morning when we weren't ready for it and they left the 90kg package on the deck. This was actually less infuriating than you might imagine, because courier companies in New Zealand are awful and this was totally par for the course. Fortunately I have a wheeled trolley for this kind of sitch and my housemate and I managed to get the thing inside at least. This was last Friday, and we left it boxed up in the hall with the intention of tackling the actual install at the weekend.
However, at 9 p.m., I decided it was now or never. I didn't want one more sleepless night: I wanted to get the bloody thing over with.
And I did. It took three hours, which was approximately three times as long as I thought it would, and it was exhausting and sweaty work on a far too hot summer night, but I removed the handle, took the door off, reversed the hingeing, measured the freezer and thought I might be able to get it through the doorway widthways after all, put the door on, tried to get it through the doorway, could not get it through the doorway, resolved never to measure anything ever again, took the door off again, got the freezer through the door sideways, put the door back on and attached the handle. And took the bloody baskets out. Here it is in its just-big-enough space:
And now I have a working freezer! At last! It has shelves! It has a light! (Why does nobody else do this?) And I can indeed open the door far enough to slide out baskets, which is just as well as you have to leave the lowest one in and the highest one doesn't have a shelf below it. I hated every minute of this difficult and stressful experience from go to whoa, but I can't help feeling a quiet little glow of pride that despite all the hurdles (some of my own making) I got it done.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-14 04:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-29 02:56 pm (UTC)Is there also a nook of space to the right of that doorway?
no subject
Date: 2023-08-30 03:32 am (UTC)Yes, that's my "pantry" (really, just some shelving vaguely hammered in by my ex-husband). The fridge is in the actual kitchen bit. Ironically, after moaning and bitching here about baskets, I ended up putting the baskets back into the freezer. My old freezer's wire shelves had a raised bit at the front which made all the difference in being able to put random stuff in there and not have it fall off. The glass shelves, of course, were flat like your new freezer's shelves.