Fridge question: 3 or 4 door?

[Susie]

We just ordered a new range yesterday, and it has a 7 week lead time.  It's ok, because our old one hasn't died, but it has us nervous about our Kenmore fridge of indeterminate age (came with the house).  The seals around the doors are cracked, and it has a couple of idiosyncrasies that are nominally concerning.  We're also pretty limited by what will fit within the space defined by our 1990s cabinets.  We're starting to think about replacing it as a preventative measure, so we can do it on our own time, and not be stuck with whatever happens to be in stock.

We are planning to stick with French door because of space/traffic flow past the fridge.  I am less sure whether I want 3 or 4 door, e.g.:



We've had 3 door French door fridges in our last two houses, so that's what I've used since 2008.  If you have a 4 door, what do you use the middle one for?  Do you like it?

[momin2013]

We have a 4 door like the one in your pic and we use it for drinks - pop, beer, sparkling water, coolers, etc. It’s VERY handy, IMO, as everything stays lined up nicely and also doesn’t take up space in the main fridge.

[pumpkin]

I don’t have one, but have a few friends who do and they’ve used that top drawer for kid snacks or fruits & veggies.

[k3am]

We have the same type as the bottom one with the extra drawer and I don't love it or hate it. It's "meh" at best - I wouldn't pay extra for it. The drawer itself is too big, even though it has a divider, and things just are kind of all over the place and it's hard to find stuff in it. I'd rather have that space be normal fridge space. It's also advertised as a "flex" space - so you can have be fridge temp, freezer temp, or somewhere in between. We have never once changed the temp on it - maybe there are people who do? - so to me, it just seems like an extra feature we paid a premium for, which is one more thing that could break, and I couldn't care less about.

I agree with your strategy on buying now before you need to replace. We only started shopping once ours died and our choices were very limited.

[simpsongal]

My mom has the kind where that drawer is built into the top section -- can you see it when the top is open at least? She keeps lunch meat and cheese in hers.

I could see beverages being nice. We have a separate beverage fridge and that things is more useful/awesome than I EVER IMAGINED! Like even having a modest party or big party we've got a traunch of beverages already cool for guests to help themselves, and it's outside the busy kitchen work triangle. WIN WIN WIN

[deadwing]

I just bought a 4 door, but mine has 2 side-by-side freezers with pull out shelves, instead of drawer-style. I personally find the drawer style freezers to be chaotic and disorganized. I prefer shelves. One of the 2 freezer compartments can be converted to fridge or wine chiller temp. It was delivered yesterday so I haven't played with it yet. I expect it will mostly be set to freeze, but I could see myself converting if I know I'll be entertaining.
www.frigidaire.com/en/p/kitchen/refrigerators/french-door-refrigerators/GRQC2255BF

[CrazyLucky]

We have a three door. The way our kitchen is set up, one of the doors opens up into a wall, which mean it doesn't open up to a full 90 degrees and makes it hard to get to the drawer inside the fridge. So if I had to do it again, I would 1000% get a four door. But if it wasn't for that issue, the 3 door would be fine for me.

[Susie]

Now that I have actual measurements I am afraid that this question might be moot.  We have adequate width for a 36" fridge (36-3/4" available) which affords us all the options we want, but we only have 68-1/4" in height before hitting the cabinet above the fridge.  We have to drop down to 30" fridges to find one short enough, and even then, there are really limited feature options.

I can see this is going to be a huuuuuuuge pain.  Damnit.  We don't even use the cabinet above the fridge!  We can't, because the hinge caps of the current fridge prevent the doors from opening.

Alternatively, we need to figure out how to do careful cabinet surgery to remove that useless cabinet that is needlessly limiting our options.  IDK if that's possible.

[definitelyO]

I LOVE LOVE LOVED my 4 door like you show. Primarily we used it for easy to access snacks and all things lunch - lunch meat, cheese, etc...
What was best that I could put a whole platter in there - a charcuterie tray, etc...
and I don't like having to open both doors to access the inside fridge-wide drawer on our new 3 door fridge.

[pumpkin]

Aug 17, 2023 14:41:22 GMT -5 Susie said:

Now that I have actual measurements I am afraid that this question might be moot.  We have adequate width for a 36" fridge (36-3/4" available) which affords us all the options we want, but we only have 68-1/4" in height before hitting the cabinet above the fridge.  We have to drop down to 30" fridges to find one short enough, and even then, there are really limited feature options.

I can see this is going to be a huuuuuuuge pain.  Damnit.  We don't even use the cabinet above the fridge!  We can't, because the hinge caps of the current fridge prevent the doors from opening.

Alternatively, we need to figure out how to do careful cabinet surgery to remove that useless cabinet that is needlessly limiting our options.  IDK if that's possible.

My parents had this problem a year or so ago and found someone to raise the bottom of the cabinet above the fridge. It’s worked out well for them and they were even able to go adjust the cabinet fronts to match all the others.

In their early 80s kitchen this was kind of necessary as opposed to removing the whole above fridge cabinet which I have to image would be much easier.

[libbygrl109]

We love our 4-door fridge. We put soda, beer, and cold cuts/cheese/packaged meats in it.

Is your fridge between 2 sets of cabinets, or is there an end panel? It may be a matter of unscrewing the fridge cabinet from the other ones. I believe when they did our kitchen, they screwed a ledger board into the wall, then screwed the end panel into that as well as the fridge cabinet.

[deadwing]

Aug 17, 2023 14:16:35 GMT -5 CrazyLucky said:

We have a three door. The way our kitchen is set up, one of the doors opens up into a wall, which mean it doesn't open up to a full 90 degrees and makes it hard to get to the drawer inside the fridge. So if I had to do it again, I would 1000% get a four door. But if it wasn't for that issue, the 3 door would be fine for me.

This is a large part of why I chose the fridge I did, rather than another side-by-side model.  This one is designed so that if the door is open 90 degrees, all drawers will pull out fully.  My fridge is in a corner, so the left door only goes to 90-ish.  The previous one with a big handle didn't quite open that far.  The lack of handles on the new one was definitely a selling point.

[SusanBAnthony]

Our 1952 house (with original cabinets) had the same issue Susie. The former owners removed the cabinet completely with careful surgery. It was on the end of a wall of cabinets so it didn't look odd to just not have a cabinet.

We had a custom cabinet shop replace it with a matching one that was up higher (as part of a bigger project) and it worked great.

If a kitchen remodel is in the future anyway, I'd definitely try my hand at doing cabinet surgery!

[lessel]

Are the cu ft storage the same on both? If that's all equal, then I'd lean toward the extra door. In our case I think that would be handy for frequently accessed kid things... cheese sticks, yogurt squeezes, yogurt protein shakes, etc.

The thing I looked for most when buying a fridge was maximizing cu ft storage and having the ice maker be the slim design one where all the parts are baked into the fridge door vs. taking up a chunk of real estate in the fridge itself.

I'd also look at removing the cabinet carefully. We turned cabinets into shelves in our old house to fit an over-the-range microwave and it wasn't too terrible. We're not great at DIY, but we did it ourselves.

[Susie]

This is the cabinet situation we’re dealing with:



This is my least favorite part of the kitchen.  The "desk" setup is so outdated and useless.  We've obviously re-purposed the area for coffee and dog stuff (dog food vaults, treats, and dog things in the lower drawers), but it's begging for whole new approach.  I also hate the stepped soffits, I feel like I'm playing Tetris.  

That being said, the rest of the kitchen is fine, we just redid the backsplash to be tolerable, the cabinets are real wood (and cherry), and we are kind of waiting til our kids grow up a little (they're 4 and 7) before we figure out what our kitchen use with big people will really look like.  I'm figuring a kitchen gut is a good 10 years out.  So I need to figure out an approach for the fridge and cabinet that doesn't look like a total hack job.

The idea of shelves is an interesting one.  Just shallow ones, e.g. to hold deep platters that don't fit in our cabinets.  That would make the space between top of fridge and bottom of soffit look more filled and intentional.

[daisyduck]

We had a similar cabinet setup and trimmed about 1-2" off the bottom of the cabinet above the fridge. We only cut the trim piece, none of the important structure in the cabinet. We had a friend with the right tools and it took him less than 10 minutes. If you only need an inch or two, I'd try to do something like that.

ETA: On my fridge, the top of the door is higher than the back of my fridge that has to fit under the cabinet, so make sure you are looking at the right dimensions.

[mrsukyankee]

I bet you could have someone remove the cabinet, paint that area and then leave it open - it won't look weird at all (I kinda think the cabinet looks a bit odd above the fridge as it juts out as if it were a last minute decision to include it).

[Susie]

Aug 18, 2023 8:33:58 GMT -5 daisyduck said:

We had a similar cabinet setup and trimmed about 1-2" off the bottom of the cabinet above the fridge. We only cut the trim piece, none of the important structure in the cabinet. We had a friend with the right tools and it took him less than 10 minutes. If you only need an inch or two, I'd try to do something like that.

ETA: On my fridge, the top of the door is higher than the back of my fridge that has to fit under the cabinet, so make sure you are looking at the right dimensions.

We've been looking at the case height as the relevant height dimension as opposed to the height to top of hinge cap, which is higher.  IDK how old the current fridge is, but it's clear that they grappled with the same issue and absolutely maxed it out.

Even if we modify the cabinet to shift the door up and trim the bottom edge, IDK if we'll have enough space for all the fridges we would otherwise like to entertain.  I think we could buy 1 to 1.5 inch that way.

Aug 18, 2023 8:55:26 GMT -5 mrsukyankee said:

I bet you could have someone remove the cabinet, paint that area and then leave it open - it won't look weird at all (I kinda think the cabinet looks a bit odd above the fridge as it juts out as if it were a last minute decision to include it).

We might even be able to DIY.  When we pulled out the fridge to paint the kitchen, I discovered that the cabinet above the fridge is not full depth (had no idea previously bc we can't open it).  There's finished, painted sheetrock behind it.  We would only have to fix up the side and the bottom of the soffit.

[lessel]

With that last pic, I think you can totally do it! What a weird cabinet/waste of space! I'd just leave it open on the top and toss some trays or something on top of the fridge if you need to. At our old house that was the time-out zone for iPad/toy/whatever was causing the kids to be a PITA.

[Susie]

My only concern with just removing the cabinet entirely is that there will be a step to the soffit that won't have a corresponding stepped cabinet under it, and I'm afraid that will look weird -- like why doesn't the soffit just go straight across from the upper cabinets above the coffee, to the wall by the basement door/stairs? If we put a shelf under that soffit step that was as deep as the soffit, but relatively close to the bottom of it, that would make it... make more sense maybe?

Trying to make the stepped soffit make sense is a losing battle, but I'm trying not to emphasize it!

The other possibility is that maybe we could remove the soffit step. There may be ductwork in the main soffit above the upper cabinets, but probably not in the bump out above the fridge. That would definitely add to the project though.

[deadwing]

If removing the cabinet solves problems and you know you're eventually going to do a gut remodel of the kitchen, my vote is to remove the cabinet and live with the odd soffit. I guarantee it will bother you more than anyone else.

[mrsukyankee]

I wouldn't even notice the soffit w/o the cabinet or think it looks weird. I'd just assume that it's something that needs to be there for 'reasons'.

[hbomdiggity]

You can totally remove that upper cabinet.

The way even the other soffit ends there may be nothing up there at all, but I agree that likely nothing in the step out.

I’d prob leave it for now though and, if the void looks weird, find some baskets to put up there to fill the space.

[dr.girlfriend]

We had an issue where our fridge *technically* fit -- if you didn't count the hinges! The contractors cut the whole bottom out of the cabinet, and now the cabinet bottom is just resting on top of the fridge, lol. You can't tell when the cabinet doors are closed because they are even with the top of the fridge as we had originally measured. A little hard to explain, LMK if you want me to try to take pics.

[midwestmama]

deadwing, so cool, I didn't know they made fridges with that design! I think that is what we'll look for in our next fridge. DH hates the freezer drawer - so hard to keep thing organized and accessible.

[deadwing]

Aug 21, 2023 9:41:06 GMT -5 midwestmama said:

deadwing , so cool, I didn't know they made fridges with that design! I think that is what we'll look for in our next fridge. DH hates the freezer drawer - so hard to keep thing organized and accessible.

I didn't know either!  I walked into my local appliance store, told the guy that historically I preferred side-by-sides but I was willing to consider a french door as long as it had 2 drawers, but I really wasn't thrilled about the drawer style freezers.  He walked me right over to this one and it was perfect.  It was more than I wanted to spend, but totally worth it for solving my problems.  

[Doggy Mommy]

We have the 4 door refrigerator that you posted and I love it. We also had space issues. This one fits but it was super close, they could barely get it into our house, and actually ended up denting it and we're waiting for a replacement. A lot of the other fridges we were looking at wouldn't have fit at all, so if fit is an issue with this model it'll probably be more of an issue with other models. I came across a facebook post from someone in my area asking about removing the cabinet above the fridge and it sounds like lots of people have done that to fit new refrigerators. We also have a wall on the left side of it and the door does open enough to make the fridge fully functional, though it would be better if the stupid wall wasn't there.

For the flex drawer, the first day we got the fridge we were thrilled to fit a huge pizza box in it and called it the pizza drawer lol. But now we keep soda on one side (using can storage organizers from Amazon), sparking water on the other side, and in the middle we have prepped lunch items (I like to keep my lunch foods in one spot so they're easy to grab in the morning).

ETA: On the model we have, which I'm pretty sure is the one pictured on the right, the freezer isn't just one big drawer. There are 2 other drawers within the drawer, little compartments on the front, and sliding dividers. It's super functional, organized, and holds a LOT.

[EvieEthelGarland]

Susie, have you thought about a counter depth? My fridge broke earlier this year and I bought a 4 door counter depth Bosch fridge. I love how it doesn't stick out past the wall. It makes me kitchen seem bigger and less cluttered. I like the drawer for cans on one side and the kid snacks on the other, but I wish I had bought the Whirlpool one just based on price. I didn't know counter depth fridges could be had at that low of a price point (we didn't have time to shop around).

[heygrey]

I think would take out the cabinet and look for a taller cabinet depth fridge so you get the same cubic feet, but no protrusion into the kitchen walkway. The height will likely take up enough of the headroom that the soffit won't feel as weird.

[kitty]

I’m not going to weigh in on 3 vs 4 because we have a side by side.
We had a similar cabinet that was too low and two shallow. It was at the end of the run which would have made the fridge look even more like an afterthought if we just removed the cabinet. We ended up hiring a local cabinet maker to build a “box” around the fridge and a cabinet above that was the correct depth for the new fridge. He was able to match the style and color exactly to our existing 15-20 year old cabinets:

Before:



After:

The new fridge is cabinet depth which greatly enhanced the aesthetic but is noticeably smaller for our family of 5. If I were you, I’d find a cabinet maker to build a new cabinet for the fridge to match the existing, possibly with a panel to cover the side of the fridge visible by the desk - if you have enough space. Is the desk standard counter depth? If so, I’d also find a small beverage fridge that would fit under the desk counter to take some pressure off the main fridge to be able to deal with the capacity of a counter depth model. I’d have the cabinet maker make something to integrate the drink fridge by adding another cabinet under the desk next to the drink fridge to fill it in and make it officially a "beverage station" instead of a desk.

ETA: I was a little nervous the new maple color and the old maple would "age" differently over time but it's been nearly 6 years and I still can't tell the difference between old and new.