I had a list of stuff I wanted to get accomplished over the Christmas break. Some of it was house-related stuff, some of it was school-related stuff, and some of it was stuff I just wanted to finally get to. It’s all been sidelined by the fridge crisis.

Our current, failing fridge is an upscale top-freezer model, standing 33″ wide by 65″ tall. It sits in our hallway coat closet, peeking out of a hole cut in the wall, directly under the staircase. That staircase is the problem, as the angle and position of the staircase dictates how much vertical room we’ve got to work with. Modern french-door refrigerators are generally 36″ wide by 69″ tall, varying in depth depending on the unit. The existing hole we had would not accommodate a larger fridge, which meant I would have to sneak an extra 4″ from somewhere.

I busted out the Sawzall and set about seeing how much room I could find if I enlarged the hole on the other side of the staircase. This meant I had to pull the moulding off the inside of the closet wall, gently saw through all of the lathe, trim a bunch of the remaining wall studs, and reroute the doorbell wiring (unfortunately severing one of the leads in the process). I measured and measured again, and with all the trimming I did, I think I’ve got the room to work with.

Once I knew that, we went to Lowe’s and looked at the available stock for the third time, finally settling on a 21 cubic foot Fridgidaire in stainless steel on a $850 discount from list price. They looked in back and found one available for us, and we ordered it.

Sunday I continued cleaning up the jagged hole I’d hacked away at, fitting drywall into the sections where the plaster had come off the lathe and replacing two sections of flooring with spare tongue and groove I’d stashed in the garage. Then I slapped a gallon of drywall spackle over the patches and called it good enough, because Jen is making a St. Mary’s County Stuffed Ham for Christmas dinner, and we needed to clean all of the dust up before she started cooking.

After cleaning the house, Finn and I sat down for some LEGO City on the XBOX and then knocked off a few of the backed-up advent activities: viewings of a Charlie Brown Christmas, Rudolph, roasting some marshmallows over the fire, and having a picnic under the tree.