One of the things about buying a used house, no matter how move in ready it is, is that it comes with a lot of minor annoyances.
One such annoyance for me was the direction of the refrigerator door. You see, my kitchen is very narrow.. what is commonly referred to as a galley kitchen. The door was setup to open into the main part of the room, the direction that people would most often be approaching it from. In order to open the fridge, you would have to walk past it, open the door, and close the door before you could pass it to leave again. A traffic nightmare waiting to happen.
So,.. I figured before I move in, I should switch the door to the other side. I started by removing the cap on the top of the fridge which covers the door bracket. Underneath I found 2 bolts.. unfortunate since I did not have wrenches or a socket set with me. However, stubborn as I am, I decided to continue tackling the job with the 2 tools I had: a cordless drill and a pair of adjustable pliers.
Moving downward, I popped off all the white caps that hide holes on the opposite side of the fridge, and used a utility knife to pop out small white screw covers on the top and bottom of both door handles. Each had 2 Phillips head screws which were removed and replaced on the other side of the door.
Between the freezer and fridge door, another bracket was attached with 3 screws. 2 of them were difficult to reach with the drill, but moving the doors around made it possible to get them out. Afterwards, I used the pliers to (slowly) remove the 2 bolts on the top bracket, and I was able to lift both doors up, off and out of the way.
The final bracket, on the bottom of the fridge, was also attached with 2 bolts. Again, using the adjustable pliers, I removed this and replaced it loosely on the opposite side. Reversing order of how everything came apart, I got both doors reattached on the opposite side.. however the freezer door could not close correctly due to the position of the top bracket. Being that it was nearing 11pm, I gave up for the night and will make the final adjustments tonight or tomorrow.
Overall this was a tedious project that I HIGHLY recommend having proper tools for. Without having to use adjustable pliers, I'm sure I could have saved at least 20 minutes. Tonight I am much better prepared as I have my entire collection of hand tools(sans wrenches) in my car ready to take to the house after work.
In addition to the attempted door flip, I spackled over some settlement cracks in each of my bedrooms. A few of the cracks had large chunks to be filled, so I wanted to make sure the spackle would have plenty of time(over a day) to dry. Normally it would only take 20-30 minutes or so. Nothing too difficult here.. I'm using 1 step, fast drying spackle that doesnt require any sanding or further prep before painting.
Finally, I took up the carpet that covered half of the kitchen, revealing the rest of the parquet floor which is in very good shape. The carpet was so old that the bottom was disintegrating, leaving a coating of dust on the floor as I removed it.
Well that's it on the house for last night. I realize this is actually the first post I'm ever making on the house, but that has more to do with the timing of getting this site up than anything else. I will soon be backfilling posts about the buying process and the work I've accomplished up till now, so hang tight.
