keeping cool

It may come as a surprise to you that neither H nor I had ever bought a large appliance, despite the multiple houses and being *mumblefortysomethingmumble* years old.  This new house has brought us to that rite of passage, however, being sans refrigerator, washer and dryer.  The laundry equipment wasn't such a big deal when we moved in 2+ weeks ago since we've got some overlap on the apartment lease and have been using it as a laundromat.  The refrigerator was a different story, not least because we were getting tired of walking ALL the way to the garage to get beer.  (Now, neveryoumind that the grand plan is to get a beater fridge just for beer ... and keep it in the garage.  That's not the point here.)
So last Saturday, tired of grocery shopping daily for dinner, we surveyed four stores - two big boxes, Sears and a local furniture/appliance retailer, RC Willey - and learned that while the pricing was about the same, the salesguy at Sears was by far the least annoying.  Also, Sears had a price match program in place, which saved us a couple hundred dollars on the washer/dryer, and the salesguy told us that if we'd come back on Sunday, they had an additional 10% sale that day. 

I had wanted one of those newfangled freezer-on-the-bottom fridges, but we were limited in the space available: we measured, twice, and from the wall to the counter was 33"; the bottom-mount fridge I really wanted was 32 7/8s" - just too close (plus I wasn't about to pay a 15% restocking fee if the fridge we bought was too big and they had to take it back).  We ended up with our third choice (because the second choice, despite there being a floor model, is apparently not available anywhere in the country) which also saved us several hundred dollars and, since I've never had a bottom-mount fridge, I really don't know what I'm missing.

The warehouse delivery guys were very excellent.  They called H on Tuesday night, saying they'd come Wednesday between 11 a.m. - 1 p.m..  They actually showed up Wednesday right at 11 (!!), brought the refrigerator in, unpacked and installed it, and then took the packaging away. 

Needless to say, we wasted no time stocking it: