Really, Refrigerator?

After living for the past 3 years without refrigeration we have slipped into the world of comfort pretty easily. Currently we have a household fridge on board. It came with the boat, it's old but it worked fine. But, suddenly the fridge lost her cool. Just to give you all a quick update we kicked off Project Galley a few weeks ago by ordering a new 20" range. Isn't it just fitting that the fridge would go on us? This is how one chore turns into a bunch of little ones.

It's almost as if she knew we were getting new appliances and wanted a replacement herself! My first clue  came on Monday morning, (of course not on the weekend) when I noticed the milk wasn't very cold. I mentioned something to G and he said to call the repair man (since he was at work). Here is where is gets interesting. Repair man arrives, he takes one look at the fridge and says, " You need a new one." Really? "That will be $20," and with that he is gone.

Now I have the magnitude of finding a fridge bearing down on me. Have you ever had to replace a broken refrigerator or other major appliance? It's not a quick and easy job. Typically, you would drive around to various appliance stores in search of the right fit, design and price. For us, we don't drive so getting to a couple of places in one night between 5pm and closing was just not going to happen. We set out to our local Home Depot and were told they had no stock, anything we wanted would be a special order. Booo! We stopped to grab a bite to eat and while we sat, we thought... if we are going to have to order something we might as well get something perfect. The Home Depot salesman was searching through inventory on the Home Depot website, I mean, we could do that! So back home we went, sort of befuddled.

Meanwhile, the freezer is still going strong and now has all of the perishables like milk and yogurt inside. GR gets to thinking, if the freezer is still working something must be able to be repaired to cool the refrigerator part. So we sleep on it, work all day and voila! When GR finally gets home from an extra long day at work at 9:30pm he tears into the fridge! I pulled up a parts breakdown of the current GE model we have and GR took a quick peak into where certain items were before he started dis-assembly. After removing the housing and fan we came up with the lazy culprit causing all the fuss! The motor that runs the fan was not running.

Seventy five dollars later we have the part on order and expect it Friday! 'Til then we keep our fingers crossed. I'm so happy we were not forced into buying another household fridge as the goal here to be more self reliant. A 12 volt system would be better in that way, but we sure would lose a lot of space, so we are torn. One thing is for sure, we will not take our luxury for granted! We should have a running fridge and a brand new range this weekend! Woo hoo! Hurray for handymen!