Today I am writing this post with a happy heart. My heart is filled with joy because (drum roll please) our kitchen reno is 99% finished!! The last thing on our giant never-ending renovation to-do list was to build/install a fridge surround. Now some of you might be asking, what is a fridge surround? Here’s what I’m talking about:
Basically it’s a custom cabinet that encloses your fridge. Unfortunately, our kitchen did not come with an upper-fridge cabinet or anything like that, so David and I created our own. We needed it to to match the other cabinets and bring balance to the kitchen. Here’s a reminder of what it looked like before:
Look at that fridge- all lonely and sad and cluttered. Just crammed up next to cabinets, but not really belonging with them. He’s trying to fit in, but he looks like he doesn’t belong. The fridge is just an after-thought in this kitchen:
So we got to work. After many days of thinking and Pinterest researching, David came up with this fancy dancy design plan:
And we went to our favorite place on earth and got the supplies:
We decided to buy an unfinished pre-made cabinet that was the same size and shape as the little cabinet that lives above our microwave. We took off the doors so it would look like an open shelf. We got home and David got to build’n:
He could tell you more about the technical process and exact steps, becasuse after I took that photo, I stepped back into the A/C’d house and watched some trashy TV while he worked away. Next thing I knew, he called me into the kitchen to help lift and place the frame with the mini cabinet into it’s place around the fridge:
The leveling part was tricky. Our floors and our fridge are no where close to level- even with each other. We had to pull out the fridge and adjust the little feet at the bottom several times. David added the side panel and front trim next:
Don’t forget to level!
Then he added the trim topper to the top to match the other cabinets and ta-dah!!! A fridge custom surround is born:
And here is David and the pouty dog showing off the new piece of furniture:
Fun fact: Max absolutely hates power tools. He was very unhappy when David was building this.
Then we pajama painted it:
The final product:
What do you think? Totally worth it!
