The Manic Ice Maker

I love ice water. Really, I do. Especially when it has a lemon wedge in it. I absolutely can not drink tap water. I am a water snob.

One thing I really insisted on when we were in the process of building our TN home was a french door stainless steel fridge with an icemaker. We'd never had the experience of an icemaker before our rented condo, and it was just so convenient. No more going in the fridge for ice and finding the ice cubes had evaporated in the ice trays. No more dribbling water on the floor from sink to fridge.

I'm sure not many people have had the enjoyment of shopping for appliances with my DH. When choosing the colors, counters, flooring, finishes for our house, he pretty much deferred to my judgement. Not so on the appliances. He set a budget for appliances without even considering that the only new appliance we bought in the last 10 years was a new dishwasher. That budget he nailed. The stove, microwave/range hood and dishwasher we had some choice on and we did change out the dishwasher. The refrigerator was another matter.

Probably the one thing about this little TN town I don't like is the lack of store competition. There are no big box stores like Target and Best Buy. We do have scaled down versions of Sears, Penneys and Kohls, an Electronics Express store and a couple independent appliance stores, and furniture shopping is a real chore here. We spent hours and he agonized over the cost.

At any rate, we made the rounds of Sears, Electronics Express, Lowes and the independant appliance store. We found a model we liked at Lowes at a price we could live with and after our builder's discount, it wasn't that much over budget.

Fast forward to refrigerator delivery day. Truck pulls up to house shortly before the asphalt people show up. No fridge on truck. Blah! Apparently Lowes sold our great deal to someone else.

Closing day finally arrives with final payoff and news that we'll have to either special order (10 days) or find something else because the store no longer has it in stock, but Lowes would make us happy. Much to Lowes chagrin, there was nothing the store that remotely went with our other appliances, had the features we wanted or that would fit in the alotted space. So we special ordered our great deal, Lowes ate the additional cost and waited another week for our fridge.

The thing I really like about the fridge is that it does not have an icemaker or water dispenser in the door. Yes, it has the requisite icemaker and the water dispenser is located on the inside of the fridge. And yes, we spent more on a french door model, but it has been very convenient except for one thing: the icemaker is possessed. No way can we keep up with the amount of ice it makes. The more we use, the more it makes. And sometimes those ice cubes come out all attached and sometimes in transporting them from freezer to glass they break apart and leave little chips of ice which become drips of water on the floor!