Best Fridge / Appliances

Dear S.,
I love the side-by-side fridge because pulling frozen chickens, turkeys, etc. out of a botton drawer can be cumbersome if you are pregnant or have a back injury. Amana makes a great side-by-side.
Dishwashers - go with a good name brand. My first dishwasher lasted 21 years! It still worked but I got rid of it because it started rusting inside. It was a kitchen-aid but I am not sure of its reputation today.
Good luck with your new home!!!!!

We are getting ready to purchase a Kitchenaid French Door fridge. We liked the sleek way that it looked, plus the ice is in the bottom drawer and you can get water from inside the fridge. We liked the option of not having water and ice on the outside of the door
As far as diswashers go, we are planning on a Kitchenaid also. I used to have a Whirlpool, and hated having to wash my dishes as I unloaded them out of the dishwasher. Again, love the sleek look, and they are supposed to clean 25% better than other dishwashers. My husband has really done his homework on this, so we are basing our decisions on that.

I loved my side by side- because of the shelves in the freezer- in our old house too (DH hated it). When we moved into this house 6 years ago, we got a freezer on the bottom (DH loves it, but I hate it). I use the freezer a lot, and I hate having to squat down and dig through everything to get what I want. Things in bags like veggies and tortellini especially, don't stack neatly and wind up sliding all over the place. It wouldn't be too bad, I guess, if it were just me, but the other 5 people in this house just cram things in the drawers any which way and it just becomes one big mess. It also doesn't seem like it holds as much (could just be my imagination) so we had to get a freezer for the basement for the overflow.

I know a lot of people love the bottom freezer- my mom is one of them, but she doesn't use it as much as I do. I agree that our old fridge was too narrow, but we didn't have a lot of space to work with there, so we had to go with one of the narrower ones on the market. I think if we'd had more space for a bigger fridge, it would have been better. My dream fridge is one of the professional style ones that is 2 separate units side by side- one just a fridge and one just a freezer- not sure if we'll ever have the space- or $ for that- oh well.

I just got a new fridge and a new dishwasher two weeks ago. I had a side by side Amana and I hated it towards the end. I got an LG French door with ice and water. I LOVE the French door style and the space it offers. It must be a personal preference thing. If it were up to me I would have skipped the ice and water, but my husband insisted on having it. Our LG model is new and just came out in February. It's called a space saver I believe because the ice and water is set up very efficiently. I got the LG because I liked the way the interior space was set up. My salesperson told me that the brands don't vary much (unless you go to the pricey luxury brands) in terms of quality and it's a matter of which model you prefer and fits your space. When something goes wrong with a fridge it's usually the ice and water feature.

I got an Asko dishwasher. I had to get the disability-rated one because it's shorter and I have a height issue with my cabinets. Be sure to measure the height carefully for your space whatever dishwasher you get. They vary. Many have adjustable legs also. I love the way the Asko cleans and dries (things really sparkle) and it's VERY quiet. It also has a stainless steel interior. But this is one really stupid thing I don't like about it--it doesn't have a delayed setting so you can set it before bed or something and it runs during the night. I never thought about it when I was looking at dishwashers and I didn't even notice until I had it in my house for almost a week. My plumber told me the Miele and the Bosch are very tricky to install.

I have a Kitchenaid dishwasher (with a stainless-steel interior) that I love. It has needed repair a couple of times in the past 10 years, but it is well worth repairing. You can load unrinsed dishes and they come out shining clean. (It doesn't do such a great job on flatware, though. I have to thoroughly rinse and scrub flatware before loading.) It has a timer, which I set for the middle of the night, so I really have no idea whether it is quiet or not.

My refrigerator is a Sub-Zero built-in (installed by the previous owners of the house). It is very, very wide, and a bit shallow. It has a huge door above, and a freezer drawer on the bottom. I LOVE IT! I would NEVER have bought this fridge, but if it ever gives out, I'll replace it with a similar unit in a heartbeat. It sounds stupid, but this appliance is so convenient that it is life enhancing.

Kitchenaid, hands down. Had a kitchenaid dishwasher that we loved, when it died after a long time, got a Bosch. The bosch is very quiet, but, it does not work for our lifestyle at all -- it was a huge mistake. The kitchenaid is built for Americans. The bosh is european and it shows. Everything is miniaturized. It is very hard to fit all of our things in and I find that I need to run it much more frequently now.

I LOVE all of my Kitchen Aid appliances.

We've built our home 10 yrs ago. We started with GE Profile and they were dead within a couple yrs, total lemons

We replaced with Maytag which also sucked.

I've had Kitchen Aid about 3 yrs and LOVE it. No issues, good dishwasher. We tend to buy the higher end of the line.

I don't know the best, but I can absolutely, hands down tell you to stay away from anything Frigidaire! Unfortunately, we have 5 Frig. appliances (mostly bought w/in a year or 2 of each other) and have had major problems w/ ALL of them! Thank goodness for extra warranties we purchased, but this last ordeal cost a total of around $7000 in damages to our home. (dishwasher was leaking for over 2 months and going underneath our tile in kitchen and also running down wall into our basement, which is where I run a home daycare. It was not an obvious leak, as the walls in basement were never wet and the dishwasher sat lower than the tile, so it never leaked out into kitchen either) It was a total NIGHTMARE! Insurance covered it because it was an appliance malfunction (they are going after Frigidaire now), but we had to be in complete upheaval for weeks. Anyway...just stay away from Frigidaire and you should be fine!!!! :)

PS...sorry for late in this post! Hope everything worked out for you!

Bosch dishwasher (cleans well and is whisper quiet. Really. Family that comes to visit hear a vague swishing sound every once in a while and I can see them trying to figure out what it is... when they are standing directly in front of the thing).

French Door refrig with bottom drawer freezer is what we have now. I like it MUCH better than the Amana side by side we had before. The shelves were just SOOO narrow. I would recommend getting the ice/water in the door as otherwise you have to bend and pull out the drawer in the bottom freezer to get ice. But since we have had this one (it's a Kenmore)--5 years this week, actually--- I have never been unable to get everything I needed in the refrigerator space (including a Xmas Turkey that was defrosting and a snowman Edible Arrangement at the same time).
The freezer, on the other hand, isn't really my favorite. But only because it is more like a chest freezer, and the things that end up on the bottom of the drawer get forgotten about. I'm looking right now at purchasing a tall stand alone freezer with a door for the garage. Just for all the stuff that goes on sale that I like to keep stocked up on: frozen veggies, ice cream, frozen dinners/pizza, novelties, bagged ice for cookouts/potlucks. Sears has one for under $300 right now, that I am considering. If you have an extra freezer space of any kind, the drawer issues for the bottom drawer freezer become a non-issue.