My Kenmore French Door Refrigerator

Ever since the first French Door refrigerators started to appear on the market, I have wanted one. They are a brilliant idea and make me wonder why they did not become popular sooner. The problem I had with them though was that they were very expensive and since we had a fridge that was working just fine, there was no need to rush out and replace it. When we moved to our new house though, our old white fridge did not match our new stainless kitchen and stood out like a sore thumb so the search for the best fridge at the best price was on.

The full name of this fridge is the Kenmore Elite Stainless Steel 25.0 cubic foot Trio Ice and Water Dispensing Bottom-Freezer Refrigerator. It is an energy star rated appliance and we will get a tax refund for purchasing it. Prior to deciding on this model, we research pretty much every French Door refrigerator that was available. We knew the 2 things it had to have was ice and water through the door and it had to be stainless steel. We narrowed our search down to a few brands and models and when this fridge came out in the Black Friday ads for an amazing price, the choice was clear.

Here's what it has:

* Ice and filtered water is dispensed through the door. Ice can be cubed or crushed and the ice maker is built directly into the door. We looked at several other models that had the ice maker inside the fridge where the shelves are which took up valuable shelf space. We decided we did not like that design and wanted one where the ice was in the door instead. We were originally worried about the size of the hole where you put in the glasses to get ice or water because we read some reviews that said the space was too small and glasses did not fit but we have not had any problems fitting any of our regular size glasses in there. Now, the big plastic cups you get from convenience stores do not fit in there but if you put them in on an angle, you can fill them just fine. The ice and water in this model are dispensed from the same opening so you need to press a button on the control panel to choose which one you want to come out.

* The interior has LED lighting with 4 adjustable, spill proof glass shelves one of which slides back allowing you to fit larger items in the front. There are 2 drawers for fruits and vegetables with their own temperature controls and one large pantry drawer that runs the entire width of the inside that also has it's own temperature controls. The strange part is, there is no drawer designated for meats. Yes, the pantry drawer can be used for meat storage but it is not very deep so it will not hold meats like a full chicken or a roast. I personally do not store many fruits in the fridge so I use one of the fruit/vegetable drawers to hold my meats. The right door contains a dairy compartment with a flip down door and 3 adjustable basket shelves. Compared to my old fridge, they are not nearly as deep and the pegs to adjust them where not very well thought out to accommodate taller items, but we have made them work just fine.

* The freezer slides open or you can flip the door down to get something quickly. It has a small basket built into the door, a slide out basket drawer and 2 deep divided baskets on the bottom. It took me a few days to get used to having the baskets in the freezer instead of shelves but I must say, it is much easier to find things now than it was when stuff got lost when it got pushed to the back of the shelves.

* The exterior is a stainless steel that is supposed to limit the amount of finger prints you see. It is much better than many of the stainless appliances I have seen but we still do get a fair amount of finger prints and smudges on it and it is a little difficult to clean but we knew this going into it so we are ok with it.

The list price on the fridge is $2799.99 but Sears regularly runs it on sale for about $2,000.00. We purchased ours as part of their Black Friday specials online on Thanksgiving Day where they had it on sale for only $1599.00. Sears does charge a delivery fee for their appliance but this one had a mail in rebate for the cost. As part of the special it also came with a free 2 year extended warranty and 12 month no interest financing if you used your Sears card.

We love this refrigerator and are extremely happy with our purchase. Once you have used a French-Door refrigerator, you will wonder how you ever lived without one.