I’m back with the second installment of building in our fridge. Part 1 was all about the prep work that needed to be done for this project to fix the trim and ready the wall. Now we can get to the building of the actual cabinet and the four ways to customize a fridge that catapulted this project to the next level.
There are a million tutorials of how to build a surround or cabinet for your refrigerator. Most of them claim to be “easy.” They may very well be.
But that’s not how we do things.
Below is the refrigerator that’s getting a glow up as seen in all of her “before” glory. This was taken on the day we moved in. Nothing shown in the below photo was our stuff. Well, technically-speaking, I guess it was since we had just signed the mortgage papers.
Let’s just say, we had a lot to pick through as we moved in.
Fast forward five years and here we are trying to build in this beast of fridge with cabinetry to make it look more intentional and less…whatever this era was.
Why make it good enough when you can make it better?
As chief architect of this DIY operation, Handy Husband operates on two settings: structural and more structural. His goal is that anything he builds can survive an encounter with an elephant.
That’s oddly specific, but I have no complaints or criticisms about this. After all, I am the chief recipient of his designs. I know a good thing when I have it!
Handy Husband also abhors iron-on edge banding. We’ve been married almost 26 years and I just learned this about him. Keeps life interesting, that one does.
I requested a Shaker-style cabinet for the refrigerator surround. He came up with a tongue and groove design for the side panels that would slot a 2×4 (cut down so that it was 1 1/8″ thick) around a sheet of 3/4-inch birch plywood, which eliminates the need to have edge banding covering up a raw edge.
It also minimizes the number of nail or screw holes on the panel face that need to be filled. There ended up being only two holes to fill where we secured the cabinet to the ceiling braces.
The goal is to make a 20-year-old fridge look panel-ready.
Have you heard of panel-ready appliances? That’s when an appliance is able to be customized with cabinet doors to match your kitchen cabinets so that it blends in with the rest of your cabinetry.
I love that look, but don’t want to spend thousands of dollars on a panel-ready refrigerator right now. Our current refrigerator came with the house and it works perfectly fine.
I wondered if I could emulate the panel-ready look by matching the color of the cabinet we were building to our refrigerator. Talk about a creative challenge! I love this sort of thing.
I wouldn’t be able to attempt this if our refrigerator was stainless steel, but since our fridge is off-white and I happen to love the softness of this color, it was GAME ON.
In the below photo, the panels are primed but not painted.
When we’re in, we’re all in.
The cabinet wasn’t the only way we planned to customize our fridge.
To further make the fridge look custom and panel-ready(ish), we did four other things.
First, we switched the handles. While you can buy new appliance pulls, we decided to make wood pulls because it seemed like a fun challenge to replicate the original metal handles, but in wood.
A friend had given us a slab of ash, which is a hardwood. We were able to cut curved handles out of this wood. Cutting and shaping the first one was the easy part. It was making the other two match the first one that was the hard part. We got close enough.
You can read more about how we made the handles in this blog post.
Second, we removed the plastic hinge caps at the top of the refrigerator and made a wood hinge cover. This was completely transformational.
I don’t know if this will work on every refrigerator, but it did for ours.
We had to route out a board with cutouts that would cover the hinges and then we reused the original screws and screw holes to secure the wood cover in place to the top of the fridge.
The below photo shows how that board looked before we painted and installed it. Keep in mind that one side of your fridge door might be connected to wires that monitor the door sensor so that it beeps if you leave it open. Those wires all had to fit in these wood cutouts.
Two prior photos in this blog post showed this board already installed, so you can get an idea of how it looks.
Third, we made cabinet feet for the bottom of the fridge. In order to do this, we removed the plastic grate at the bottom of the refrigerator. That grate allows airflow into the bottom of the fridge, and it’s really important to not cut off airflow to your fridge. However, that grate’s primary purpose is to cover the levelers at the front of your fridge.
We didn’t need the levelers because our fridge was already sitting level on its wheels, so we could remove them.
This gave us an almost flat surface to secure cabinet feet to the bottom of the fridge.
We did have to work around a couple of screw heads that were structural to the frame of the fridge though.
I do think chunkier feet would look good, maybe even better, here too, but there is the movement of the freezer door to consider and the fact that we need to be able to pull the fridge out in the future. This style of cabinet feet is what we have on the opposite wall, so it all matches now, but I may change my mind later and go beefy!
Fourth, we removed the manufacturer logo or decal from the front of the refrigerator. This alone made a subtle, but important difference. The best thing is everyone can do this!
It’s as easy as getting out your hairdryer, heating up the decal to loosen the adhesive, and carefully prying off the decal. Scrub the area clean when you’re done.
It was fine in my instance, but don’t use a metal putty knife that can scratch your fridge, particularly if you have a stainless steel fridge. That would stink and I don’t want you to be sad or mad…at me.
All in all, I am so happy with how this refrigerator is looking these days. It has been worth all of the trouble and so rewarding from a creativity and budgeting standpoint.
Next time I’ll show you how the finished refrigerator looks with its built-in cabinet and sliding drawer above the fridge!
Have you ever thought about customizing your refrigerator? Do you think we are nuts for going to all of this trouble? Let me know. You can always comment on this blog post, email me here, or reach out via Instagram or Facebook.
Happy DIYing.
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
Braided Rug: NuLoom
Bench: Thrifted
Table: Handmade by Handy Husband
Fridge: Make me an offer and it could be yours.
Curtains: Amazon
Gold Curtain Rod: Amazon
Art: Thrifted
Wallpaper in Hallway: NextWall Tulip Garden
Thank you for being here today! I appreciate sharing stories and ideas with you. Here are some other blog posts you might enjoy.
5 Kitchen Organization Strategies I Use Wherever We Move
Wistful Wednesday – Oregon Kitchen (This one goes WAY back before blogging days.)
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