Have you ever had one of those days, or worked on one of those projects that just fights every step of the way? You spill your morning cup of tea, you walk out to your car without your keys, you work on something for 3 hours only to figure out you completely messed up and have to back track? Well I had one of these experiences recently moving out an old fridge.
It all started with an amazing deal I found on Craigslist. I found a 1,500 cabinet depth fridge being listed (brand new in box) for 650$. This was a cash only deal, and in a decent/somewhat sketchy part of town (I’ll be honest I’m not even 100% sure about that, but it was up north which I will just paint with a wide brush as “somewhat sketchy). I drove up there with my buddy Brian, the deal went great, got a seemingly brand new 1500 fridge for only 650 cash, didn’t get mugged or otherwise harassed. Score one for the good guys.
The trouble starts right from the get go once we get the fridge home though….. its too wide to fit through the doorway (damn you builders from 1932, would it have killed you too have building codes! lol) So after a lot of “finagling” we get it through the door, ripping the box during the process but nothing major. From here the wheels really come off once we try to take the old fridge out.
To start with I move the fridge slightly so that we can get a dolly under it… I make a big gash in the hardwood floors I recently restored (damn). From there the fridge magically starts leaking water everywhere from some mystery location that we never end up finding. We move it all of the way to the door that separates the kitchen and dining room…. it doesn’t fit. Not even close. WTF how did they even get this monster inside in the first place… we are totally stumped for a good 15 minuets. We finally settle on opening the door, and “rotating” it through… it works! That college education really did pay off after all…. but then we meet our next obstacle, the front door. No problem we think to ourselves, now that we know how to do this “rotating” move with the door open this should be no match for us…… What we manage to do at the front door still enrages me when I think about it. We manage to literally get a section of the storm door stuck “inside” of the old fridge. In the process completely bending (ruining) a supporting section of the storm door that holds it onto the wall…. when its all said and done I’m so angry with the old fridge I literally picked it up and threw it off our porch resulting in the horror scene you see below:
There are 2 morals to this story:
1.) Sometimes when the universe is fucking with you on a day, or on a project at every turn, its best to take a step back. Take the day off, take a break from the project and come back to the too it in 30 minutes (preferably use this break time to eat something as well).
2.) Take 5 minutes before doing everything and think “is there any easier way I could be doing this, or a way I could get someone to do it for me”? In this case as it turns out I could have literally been paid $50 by our power utility company, and they would have moved the old fridge out of my house for me….. let me say that one more time…. They would have paid me $50 to remove the fridge from my own home!
For anyone thinking of moving their fridge themselves, do yourself a favor and get paid to have someone else do it for you:
http://www.ameren.com/sites/aue/UEfficiency/Pages/ReRecycle.aspx
