Valentine's 2012

I think I have mentioned here before that of all the gift-giving holidays out there, Wade seems to hit a homerun every Valentine's.  It's kind of funny because it's such an odd holiday--eat lots of candy and profess your undying love, but some of the best gifts--and surprises--I've gotten have come on Valentine's.

This year, we were gearing up for a normal holiday when we decided, for fun, to see how old our refrigerator was.  We saw on a sticker in the very back that it was made in 1987.

1987!  I was six years old in 1987!

When we moved into our house 9 1/2 years ago, we inherited all of grandma and grandpa's old appliances.  I've hated the refrigerator since the day we moved it in.  It was old.  It was ugly.  It was never clean.

(That last one was probably more my fault then the fridge's fault).

But the thing I hated the most about the fridge was it's lack of an ice and water dispenser in the door.  I've been in love with this feature since I saw my first one 23ish years ago.  The idea that you can get ice and water ANY TIME and it would be cold and filtered--amazing.  You don't have to wait for a stupid Brita pitcher to filter your water.  You don't have to wait for ice fairies to refill your plastic ice cube trays.  You just walk over to the door and Voila!

So we decided to look up the average lifespan of a refrigerator.  10-15 years.  I'm sure we all have heard of horror stories when refrigerators have gone out.  My parent's refrigerator went out one weekend when we were all working on a project and hadn't opened it for three days.  By the time someone opened it, all the food had gone bad.  It was also a holiday weekend and my dad left to go out of town for three weeks the next day.

We thought maybe we should preempt the inevitable by looking for a new refrigerator now.  You know, one with a water and ice dispenser in the door.  Man, these suckers are expensive.  However, since Wade works for a certain company that makes appliances, he gets a killer deal.  And that deal may not be offered come April, so we thought maybe now would be the time to get our fancy-dancy refrigerator.

While looking at the refrigerators offered at cut throat prices, we also came across a stove.  A really nice stove.

When we finished our basement and put in our gas fireplace, we had them run a gas line to the kitchen upstairs in case we ever wanted to get a gas stove.  Over the last few months, I've been quizzing people on their stoves.  People like their flat top stoves, but overwhelmingly, people LOVE their gas stoves.  Especially the people who cook A LOT.  So when we came across this really nice gas stove in the color we wanted at a price that was really nice , it was a no-brainer.

But then, I told Wade we can't have a black/stainless steel stove and a white overhead microwave.  It will look terrible.  So we added a new microwave to the cart.

But...all we had left in the kitchen to replace was the dishwasher and it would look silly to have all black and stainless steel appliances except for the dishwasher.  So we added one of those too.

After after 15 minutes (not including the time it took to go to four different stores to look at said appliances before ordering them online and the time Wade spent freaking out over the absurdity of replacing perfectly working appliances with brand new ones because of color--a definite first world problem((a note: I had no such qualms about replacing my appliances.  I have been living with the UGLIEST refrigerator in the history of the world for the last 9 years. It's going to go out eventually, and I rationalized to Wade that it would be better  if we just upgraded now instead of waiting until it did)), they were bought and a delivery date was scheduled for the following Saturday.

It's been two weeks, and I LOVE my fridge.  I love the water and ice feature the most, like I thought I would.     I love that I can get crushed ice--just the way I like it--with the hit of a button.  I LOVE my gas stove and how it cooks things fast and evenly.  And it's level, which was a huge problem with the other stove.  And the dishwasher is really cool.  It has a feature where you just dump in a bottle of liquid dishwashing detergent and it will dole out the appropriate amount each wash cycle.  I only have to fill it up once every two months.  It's one less step I have to do to get clean dishes.  It's awesome.

The microwave is very much like our last one, though the popcorn button seems to work considerably better. And it looks cooler.

All in all, a great Valentine's once again.

Behold, a brand new looking kitchen.  Next project:  Doing something about those ugly, orange cabinets.