AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, the phase from adolescent to adult is complete when the thought of new appliances gets you all excited like a 7 year old on a sugar high.

Just to refresh, we are demolishing our kitchen down to the studs.
Changes being made: new floors, new cabinets, new counter tops, new backsplash, crown molding, getting rid of the fan, installing a range hood, creating a built-in using the wall on the left which will hold the fridge and custom-made sliding pantry, and NEW APPLIANCES!!!

Just for reference, there isn't anything necessarily WRONG with our old fridge... I just hate it.
 Mostly because back in September, it blew a water line while I was home alone and caused about $4,500 worth of damage to our kitchen.... awesome, thank you.
 However, good news did prevail since we knew the old kitchen floors were coming up anyway (oak floors in a kitchen? No thank you.  Not with my water luck) and we could put the insurance money to good use to redo the entire kitchen.

Ever since "Water"gate 2012 (haha) Chris and I have been on the hunt for a new fridge.

We had our eye on a nice french door fridge, but after talking to my parents who have one and playing with every model ever made within a 20 mile radius, we determined that style probably wouldn't be the best for us.  Chris and I are both over 6ft tall (yes, I'm gigantically large and my size 11 feet thank you for your sympathy) so the idea of constantly bending over to dig through a pull out freezer with only two different drawers wasnt exactly a good fit for us.  Yes, sure they have fancier models with more drawers, but when you are on a budget, you gotta stick to it and only buy what you can afford (**cough**cough**Hear that Washington D.C.?**cough**)

After reviewing 100 different side by sides, we fell in love with this beauty:

ohhh... ahhhhh

The Samsung  RS267TDRS.

The next picture shows why we I love it so much.
See that in there... in the fridge... towards the top... the metal thing... yea, that would be a WINE RACK!!!!  I could now store all my lovely Chardonnays at eye level and talk to them every time I open the fridge! (In our current fridge, I can only talk to one at a time on the very bottom shelf of the door, which isn't nearly as fun).

Although I was sold the moment I opened it and yelled "WINE RACK!!!" at the top of my lungs in Lowe's, Chris was a bit more tedious but came around to liking it too.  His favorite feature? The ice tray in the door of the freezer; opens up the shelves for a lot more storage space.

We then spent all of the Christmas season scoping out the best deals from store to store and in the end???.... We didn't buy anything... ... ... (we're idiots)....

Missing a majority of the sales was a major bummer and all the appliances were back to full price by the beginning of the new year.  Yes, we knew their would be sales again, but since demo starts tomorrow (aka. Jan 12th) we kinda wanted the new fridge to be ready for us once everything finished.

Enter the internet and a little investigating.

During the holidays, Sears actually had the best price so I was browsing their website when I stumbled across our exact model for $989.99  (normal retail was $1799.99 but with sales and everything, it usually came down to $1399.99... no one pays normal retail)

Curious as to why our model was so low, I was disheartened to find the answer... it was at their outlet store. And on top of that, it had "cosmetic damage"....  Darn....

However, after I finished work, I figured I would run over to the outlet to at least LOOK at it.  No harm right?
 Ummm, hi, yea, it's perfect... what in the wide-world-of-sports were they talking about? Cosmetic damage? Apparently my love for the RS267TDRS has made me blind to whatever "cosmetic damage" they were talking about.

When I asked the salesman, he couldn't find it either so we pulled it out to get a closer look.  There, on the side back of the unit, was a scrape... Really? That's it? After inspecting it for another 10 minutes, we couldn't find anything else except the scrape on the side (which looked like it had been done with a key or something... not even a dent!!)

I seriously expected for this thing to have a donkey-kick in the freezer door, but it was PERFECT on the front!  Plus, no one is ever going to see the side since its being placed in the new wall built it.

Being paranoid, I asked it we could take it out a little further and plug it in to make sure everything was a go.
Then, getting more paranoid, I looked in the fridge and had an uneasy feeling about my favorite little wine rack.
The height from the shelf to the rack looked rather small... maybe TOO small to fit a bottle of wine in there (THE HORROR!!!)!

The top shelve didn't move and the salesman assured me it would "probably" hold a normal bottle of wine just fine. "Why else would they have a rack in there?"... Again, I'm paranoid...(I don't know, SIR... maybe Samsung thinks Americans want their ketchup/tabasco bottles at eye level?!)...  And IF I CANT GET A BOTTLE OF WINE IN THIS FRIDGE, WHAT HAS THIS WHOLE THING BEEN ABOUT????!!!!!

So I went to World Market and bought a bottle of wine.

Please fit, please fit, please fit, please fit

Golden.

...and now I feel stupid for bringing a bottle of wine into the Sears outlet store... bonus point...

So after being freaked out for no reason and calling Chris to secure the deal (he was in Las Vegas for work) I made the long walk to the check out lane and bought our fridge.

After taxes, delivery charge, and 10% discount for using a Sears Card (I hate credit cards but it was worth if for the discount and we plan pay it all off immediately) the total came to $1040.18!!!

Our out the door cost for one without a scratch on the side? $1578.56... (we had them calculate it out when we were there over the Christmas season...that's even with the super sales!)...

Savings?: $536.38!!!

$500 can SOOOO go to more things in this kitchen...like a new sink... or microwave... or dishwasher... The possibilities are ENDLESS I TELL YOU, ENDLESS!!!

For right now, here is the tentative schedule for the kitchen remodel...

Keep in mind that Chris and I both have full time jobs and we are doing about 75% of this remodel ourselves

Have you guys bought any new appliances lately? Did you get in some of the great deals during Christmas? Does anyone else want to personally thank the genius that put a wine rack in the fridge?  Because I kinda want to shake his hand give him a bear hug.

-Samm

P.S- Demo starts tomorrow so I will do my very best to have all the super-scary-"I-can't-believe-we-are-actually-doing-this" pictures for you on Monday!!!!