Out with the old, in with the new

Our brand new appliances were delivered into the garage yesterday! Travis stayed home to supervise their delivery.

In shopping for these appliances, our cabinet maker referred us to a specialty "Appliance and Decorative Plumbing" supplier, Standards of Excellence. Up until now, it never occurred to me to shop for appliances at any place besides the big-box electronics stores: your Best Buy or Fry's. Consider me educated and completely sold on the idea of the specialty appliance store. The store itself is actually just a showroom of different lines of appliances installed in mini-kitchens so you get to shop with your eyes. They order in the models you want so, as long as they have relationships with a particular manufacturer, they can get an item in. There's no worrying about an item being in stock -- everything is, given some lead time. The salespeople are actually knowledgeable about the appliances they sell instead of being some pimply teenager. I learned that Whirlpool actually owns the KitchenAid brand. It happens that we ended up ordering mostly KitchenAid appliances with a Whirlpool dishwasher. Since their lines are related, the styling is similar enough that I think they'll pass for being part of a set once they're installed. They had competitive prices to ones I found online but they had the advantage of 1) being a brick-and-mortar which is still a boon for large purchases, 2) will haul away my old appliances as part of the delivery, 3) and since they were local, could be flexible about the delivery date giving us the ability to reschedule later if our kitchen wasn't quite ready in time.

As I pulled into our street anticipating my new appliances, the buyer Travis found for the old O'Keefe & Merritt who was in the driveway picking up our old stove. It was a touch bittersweet to see the thing go despite my feeling like I was playing Russian Roulette every time I went to light it. The stove was part of the reason I fell in love with this house in the first place and has suck steadily by us for the last year, enduring power outages without breaking a sweat -- it doesn't depend on an electric starter. So here I bid my final farewell to: