Kitchen Post #9 - Appliances - Selection & Review

We spent a lot of time discussing kitchen appliances in our household. We both agreed our old fridge had to go. It was a circa 1908 model....and next to our new cabinets it looked like a complete dinosaur.

But being the tightwad I am, I thought we could somehow convert our portable dishwasher {that we'd bought 5 years before on ebay for $100} into a built-in. And I knew we could continue using our black/stainless electric range. But Dave finally convinced me that our new custom cherry cabinets and granite counters "deserved" a matching set of new appliances. Not to mention, he argued, we could probably get a deal at the store if we bought a whole set at once.

So then we had to discuss what color appliances to purchase: stainless, black, white, etc. as well as which brand: Whirlpool, Frigidaire, LG, etc. My husband never wavered from his position of wanting stainless. I believe I've mentioned before that he has "expensive taste", so you understand, right? But he also argued that that's what was popular these days and we were fixing our house to sell it, so it would be wise to put stainless steel appliances in the kitchen. I agreed with that logic. Still, I was nervous. I knew we would have children someday and I feared that our fridge would end up looking like this on a daily basis

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and I would never clean it and therefore we'd end up having an argument on a daily basis about how poorly I keep house. And, seriously, what intelligent housewife wants to set herself up for daily failure??? I origingally thought I wanted black appliances but once I saw the new black appliances on the market I realized that their glossy finish (as opposed to the textured finish of the 90s) would also show fingerprints just as much. So I figured we might as well get stainless.

So we hit our home away from home, Lowe's one evening and browsed the appliance section. We were pleasantly surprised to find that the Frigidaire Gallery collection has some sort of smudgeproof coating to resist fingerprints. Not to mention we loved the stainless steel/chrome handles they had resulting in a lot less black plastic on them like the Whirlpool collection. And we found a fridge that was 20% off because it was last year's model or something like that. So that saved us a ton of money.

So what do I think now after having these appliances for 8 months? I'm SOLD! I would buy them again (and in fact, I may - if we sell them with this house...haha!). All in all, we generally clean the handles on a weekly basis since they get touched a lot, but the rest of the appliances have been cleaned maybe 4 times in 8 months. (And I just use the Method brand stainless steel clearner.) Fingerprints just don't happen with that special coating. Even with a toddler rubbing all over them 1000 times / day. I'm SO happy with our purchase. Not to mention they look AMAZING!

The other thing to not is that we have a glass cooktop on the stove. A lot of people wonder how easy/not easy that is to keep clean. It came with a special ceramic cooktop cleaner and sponge. We follow the directions with it to clean a big mess and it comes off no problem. And we just use plain old glass cleaner for easy to clean, everyday messes.

The other feautres that I absolutely LOVE about our new appliances are the delayed start features of the oven and dishwasher. I can put our Sunday lunch in the oven before church and we come home to a baked meal. Yum! Certainly takes away the temptation to go out to eat on Sunday afternoons, saving us lots of money...And I almost always set our dishwasher to run in the middle of the night to keep from using hot water before our showers in the evening.

Anyone else particularly fond of their new kitchen appliances? Tell me why!