Building In Our Fridge: The Reveal

It’s reveal day! We’ve been working on building in our fridge and customizing it to make it look panel-ready(ish) and now I get to show you how it looks.

It does make me a little insecure to release these photos into the wild because I know this is just one step in a multi-step process of making over our kitchen. There is still more to come as time and budgets allow. I hope you enjoy seeing a transformation over time because that’s what happening here.

Here’s the original before photo of the refrigerator. Try to contain your jealousy.

Fast forward a few years and we removed some wallpaper, painted, and she looked like this.

If you know your refrigerators and think she looks older than most cars on the road today, you’d be correct. This fridge is 20 plus years old and works like a charm, thank you very much.

Also, I’m going to knock on wood because we just went to a bonkers amount of trouble to build it in and I don’t want to jinx it.

Speaking of wood, we made this fridge some custom wood handles out of ash.

After working with pine wood so often, it’s a downright joy to work with a gorgeous hardwood like ash.

Clearly, we like this look, but making wood handles was more about having the freedom to experiment and expand our DIY skills. We probably wouldn’t have felt comfortable doing this to a new fridge that costs thousands of dollars.

Fast forward nine months after we added the custom wood handles (told you this was a transformation over time!) and we finally birthed a cabinet to conceal the fridge.

Tada!

My goal was to make this refrigerator look high-end and panel-ready(ish) at a glance and I think we achieved that.

The cabinet color matches the creamy color of the fridge perfectly.

We replaced the plastic hinge covers at the top of the refrigerator with a wood cover. That alone was a game changer because it closed up a potential gap between the fridge and the cabinet above. More about that how-to of that can be found in part two of this series.

We removed the plastic grate at the bottom of the refrigerator and added cabinet feet to give the fridge a furniture feel.

That plastic grate, the one you kick out of place at least once a week, mainly covers the levelers on the front of the fridge. Miracle of miracles, we did not need those, so they could be removed. There’s a secondary grate behind the plastic one, at least on our fridge, so the fridge still gets plenty of airflow.

We also removed the manufacturer logo from the front of the refrigerator using a hairdryer and a putty knife. I should have done that a long time ago!

Now, let’s talk about the cabinet above the refrigerator. It is actually a pullout drawer with shallow sides.

The ceilings are really short in this kitchen – not quite 7-feet – so the amount of space we had to work with was limited. For perspective, there is not even enough room to put a dinner plate on edge above the fridge.

After running through our options of two doors that swing out or one door that opens upward, we settled on a slide out drawer.

What do we keep up there? Nothing so far. Ha!

Could end up being my new candy hiding place though.

What’s next for this kitchen?

So. many. things.

I share what’s happening and all the behind-the-scenes on Instagram stories as it happens and have a kitchen highlight saved if you want to catch up.

We want to build a cabinet that conceals the trash and recycling cans.

We’d also like to build Shaker-style cabinet fronts for the black cabinets and the dishwasher and then paint them all to match the refrigerator. We also REALLY need a new countertop. The granite is literally glued together in places because it has cracked and broken apart around the sink.

Did you know you could glue together a broken granite countertop with heavy duty construction adhesive? I don’t recommend it, but it has held for about 4 years. We’ve been babying it along for quite a long time now.

I’d love a new range too, but the European-style ranges are big money, so that might take me several years to save up.

We’re already five and a half years into this kitchen transformation, so a few more years won’t hurt.

What do you think about our new refrigerator cabinet? Did we give that old fridge an upgrade? Let me know. You can always comment on this blog post, email me here, or reach out via Instagram or Facebook.

Happy DIY!

Room Sources:

Wall Color: Behr Arcade White in satin

Trim Color: Behr Bit of Sugar in semi gloss

Wainscoting Color: Behr Khaki Shade in semi gloss

Cabinet Color: Behr Confident White in semi gloss (cabinet enamel paint)

Brass Cabinet Pull: Amazon

Braided Rug: NuLoom

Bench: Thrifted

Table: Handmade by Handy Husband

Fridge: Oldie but a goodie and tricked out by us

Curtains: Amazon