It's always about hot and cold, heating and cooling. We're taking cold showers, waiting for a new water heater to be delivered and installed, but realized that we just couldn't live with a dead freezer: no ice for our vermut! :-(
Our kitchen is a totally "built-in" [US] or "integrable" [Spain]: Death Star black cabinets hide everything, in a Euro-standard 60cm cabinet width layout. Our left-most cabinet has a separate congelador (freezer) and on a shelf above, a frigerífico (fridge). The congelador was dead, dead, dead. Simple, right? Order a new one, "integrable", and move on. Nope. The way the cabinet door mounts to the freezer has the cabinet door hinged as usual and connected to the freezer door by a clever/complex/stupid sliding mechanism; the new style (you see this in the US too) is to mount the door panel to the appliance, which means its hinges have to support the weight -- totally different mechanism, we might have to get a carpenter into re-cut the cabinet door to fit.
It also meant there was precisely ONE model of congelador on the market that could even be integrated inside a 60cm (exterior width) standard European cabinet. And it cost about 700€, ouch! I noticed we had to run our refrigerator, a separate unit with the same cabinet-mounted sliding mechanism, at about the max cooling -- clearly this was an old, tired, and inefficient unit; what would it cost to replace it too, in maybe a year?
Next door to our apartment building -- I mean, literally next door -- is the Milar Catalá electrodomésticos shop where we ordered our water heater. Dani at the shop and Irene both persuaded me to give up on the Darth Vader integrated look and go with a free standing fridge, a stainless "combi" with freezer and refrigerator. There were hundreds of models available, in all price ranges, efficiencies, and finishes. After my usual ADHD analysis, spreadsheets, and such, we narrowed it to one unit based primarily on energy efficiency. The cost of power isn't going down any time soon; we know the price of gas/petrol in Spain is at least 2x that in the US, so expect electricity to be at least double what we paid in Arlington.
All appliances (and our apartment!) have an energy efficiency rating, between A (excellent) and G (expensive). We focused on biggest 60cm unit that would fit, with the highest efficiency available, "B". When we compared it to another model we really liked (black crystal finish!), it cost less than half to run! Easy to amortize this over a year or two. And with prices rising in Europe due to the Ukraine/Russia war, it's a good choice.
It wasn't hard bruting out the old freezer and fridge, but we had to disassemble the cabinetry. It's all 60cm European standard stuff, but custom built on prem. After hacksawing pins and dowels on a similar cabinet, we came up with a plan for the fridge cabinet. We "scienced the shit out of it" and realized that if we pulled out a filler panel, we'd gain 2cm, which we hoped would be enough to remove the left panel from its internal pins, then pull the old freezer/fridge shelf, then disassemble the cabinet, leaving a princely 2cm left to slide in the new fridge.
Dani, our dealer with Milar downstairs, verified our measurements, and around 5pm we put our money down and ordered the LG fridge, a 2.03 meter behemoth.
Only one problem: would it fit in the tiny elevator we have in our building? We are on the top floor, 9th floor, over a hundred steps up. I measured the elevator doors, and it was gonna be close, really close. There's something magical about living here that we never would have expected: Dani came over to our apartment, and measured the elevator, and sent the dimensions to the transport company, as part of the service -- can you imagine that in the US?? The inside doors were under 200cm tall, and the inside of the elevator itself was 212cm max: we were not even sure the fridge could be tilted in, as the elevator's about the size of a Clark Kent phone booth! I could not imagine the cost to pay hulks to walk this up the 9 narrow flights of stairs!
But wouldn't you know: the delivery guys came, and ever... so... carefully... angled the naked fridge into the tiny elevator, where it had a couple millimeters of clearance to the back and ceiling. It's funny, Dani said "They usually send a small guy and a big guy", and I asked, "What's the small one do?", to which he replied, "Stay inside the elevator to push the button." And that's exactly what happened! :-) They slotted it into the space we created by removing the cabinet, with about 1cm to spare.
Amazing! It had been under 16 hours since we placed our order and had it -- very carefully -- installed. Finally, we'd have ice for our Vermut and Gin Tonics! :-)
We let it cool down and walked to the grocery store to stock up, then Irene cooked a nice dinner of pork chops, potatoes, and asparagus on the grill on the terrace while the sun set. A rather pleasant 5€ bottle of wine and a finish with an even cheaper Cava for dessert after dark.
Only one problem: the door came hinged on the right, and we need it to swing from the left. But an LG technician is arriving Monday to swap the door; dunno why they have to send someone out, for 59€, but if we do it ourselves we void the warrantee. Fine.
Time for a cold breakfast beer from Montseny, a local craft brewery.
Life is feeling pretty good, now that we're back to our old rhythm of cooking and eating. We're loving the quality of service we're getting from shops around here, it's really refreshing.
Now we just need some hot water for a shower... just a few days to wait, we're told, so close...
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