After so much researching, second guessing and changing minds we are finally making some progress and making some decisions on our kitchen remodel! 🙌🙌🙌 We just ordered our appliances last week and I can’t believe I had no anxiety about it. I think when we finally found the right fit, we were excited about it and it didn’t feel as scary. We have no idea if we made the right choice but we will find out 😬 and I will let you know! 😆
I started our journey with the Consumer Reports Kitchen Planning & Buying Guide which was super useful since we are first timers at this. It gave us a great overview of all the options and what brands tend to have higher ratings overall. Functionality is obviously very important to us but so is aesthetic which is why we settled on Kitchenaid. Originally I wanted all of the appliances to be the same brand so that they would match well together. We were specifically looking for a refrigerator, dishwasher and gas range. We opted to combine our built in oven and gas range into a slide in range to save some money. As much as we would like double ovens, we rarely use them and would rather save the money. To offset the loss of the second oven we picked up a turkey roaster on sale after Thanksgiving 🦃 We also chose this range with a baking drawer that heats up to 450 degrees 🔥
The dishwasher was a no brainer because Kitchenaid has such great reviews on their dishwashers. We also decided on the option with a third rack for silverware because Nate and I still cannot agree on silverware face down or face up (🙋♀️team face up!) We are hoping for cleaner silverware and no disagreements! Our dishwasher will be in our island which will be a different color than the rest of the cabinets. Since we wanted it to make a statement we decided to panel the dishwasher to match 🖤
Kitchenaid Panel Ready Dishwasher
We really had the hardest time deciding on the refrigerator. Originally to finish the suite we wanted to do the Kitchenaid refrigerator because we loved the modern look of it. We really wanted a built-in because of where the fridge sits in our kitchen, you view it from the side and we didn’t want it sticking out. But we just could not justify the price tag of the built-ins so we decided on a counter depth option. When we went to see the Kitchenaid in person we didn’t love the gap between the shelves and the back of the fridge, not to mention the counter depth still left us with 3 inches sticking out from our cabinets. While we were there another fridge caught our eye that we never heard of, Fisher & Paykel. So we went home and did our research 🤓 I found great reviews on them! They are a well known, well established brand from New Zealand. They are newer to the United States and not as widely known as some of these other brands. The best part is they offer a much more affordable built-in option that comes panel-ready which solved all of our issues in one. We were able to have that flush look with the cabinets and it wouldn’t stick out as a different brand.
Fisher & Paykel Integrated Refrigerator
We are soo excited and can’t wait to see how it turns out. The only thing that does make me a little nervous is hopefully it will look seemless when it is all installed 🤞 Will keep you posted! Let me know if you have any experience with any of these appliances to see what we are in for! 😊🖤 On to more decision making 👊