Final appliance post, I promise
I know you’re all bored to tears by now, but I have to moan one more time.
The refrigerator is almost certainly not worth fixing; I’m guessing it’s the same age as the house, which is the same age as Barney (actually recorded with the land registry people on the day of his birth!) and the call-out charge is about half of what we’d pay for a new one.
However. I can’t get anything at all in beige linen sandstone (because only one manufacturer ever made things in that colour and now they’ve stopped) and the other colours are going to look stupid with the kitchen. I didn’t choose the kitchen. I quite like it, but if I’d chosen it, I’d have picked something easier to match not look stupid with.
And I can hardly find anything to fit the space we have. All the newer refrigerators are wider - there must be masses of people who have narrower slots for them, but apparently in this case supply does not follow demand, as the manufacturers are phasing out the “old” standard size and bringing in a “new” standard size which is just a few centimetres wider - not enough to make a real difference in the space inside the fridge, but enough so the damn thing won’t fit in the kitchen.
We could make the space slightly wider by taking off part of a cupboard - probably a couple of hours work for a carpenter - but then we’d lose one of the biggest cupboards in our kitchen because the door to it wouldn’t open past the front of the refrigerator.
We could buy a bigger refrigerator - this would really be far better for us, but there’s only one place it could go in the kitchen, which is a) on the other side of the breakfast bar/table thing, and b) where the aquarium now lives - and there’s nowhere else for the aquarium. And of course would leave an ugly great hole under the counter.
In short, it is not possible to buy anything suitable. So I get to spend my money on something that’s the wrong size, the wrong colour and the wrong design.
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Our built in fridge packed in last year and we now use it as a cupboard for tupperware type stuff. We used our old fridge which was in the garage, and brought it into the kitchen, but like you it had to go the otherside of the kitchen and taken up valuable space. We had the same problem with the diswasher. When we put the white one into the gap it looked so stupid, but now we’re used to it we hardly notice it any more.
Have you checked out the second hand/refurbished market? Someone might have the size/colour you want lying around in a shop somewhere…
There isn’t much of a second-hand market here tbh, and the colour we need hasn’t been manufactured in the size we need for about five years - so we’d be looking at another older fridge. I wonder if you could paint a fridge with radiator paint…
Oh, I remember the size problem! We custom-built our kitchen in our B’ham house, nicely fitting in the Zanussi fridge-freezer my grandmother gave us for a wedding present. 15 years later the fridge-freezer died, and could we find a replacement to fit? Sigh… actually in the end we did find one which was OK, but not brilliant. But it took ages. And we didn’t have to worry about colours, we just went for basic white (thankfully).
Not a Samsung was it (sorry if I’ve missed you saying what it is) - we didn’t have a fridge for most of last summer because the temp control went screwy, we came down with food poisoning and it was a bloody nightmare - so major hugs from us!
Nope, a Hotpoint.
Hotpoint actually make a pretty good under-the-counter model, and it’s even available in the right colour, and I’d have happily bought one of those - if it wasn’t 4 cm too wide! Grrr.
ARGH to it all
If it is any consolation, our car cost £1000 this month 
No consolation at all - I was going to ask you for a loan!