Sticking up For Me

As you may know, (heaven knows I’m talking about it enough 😀) I am having some renovations done to a house in Yarmouth Nova Scotia. One of the renovations involves removing a pantry, adding electrical plugs, and pushing a refrigerator into the newly expanded area. Doesn’t seem like something that’s going to cause a lot of controversy, does it?

The wiring for the refrigerator in the back of the pantry

I spoke to the gentleman who is overseeing the work and asked him how wide the new opening was. He responded that the opening was approximately 28 in. I wrote him back and told him that that opening would not be enough for a modern refrigerator. He said in an email, that the width was sufficient for a modern fridge. In the past I have been loathe to argue with people who are doing work for me, being more likely to stand down and defer to their expertise. This time however, I knew that the opening size was simply not appropriate to get a refrigerator into. I did some research, very quickly, on the internet using some easy to access sites like Home Depot and Leon’s as well as one of the local appliance shops in Yarmouth.

It turns out, (as I thought, because I’ve been doing my own research on different appliances) that a refrigerator which isn’t one of the tiny, but very cute , 11 cubic feet European refrigerators (which can be as small as 24 in in width) generally have a width starting at 30 in. The very big double door units that have water, ice cube, crushed ice and whatever else makers, can be as wide as 38 inches.

Seeing as I don’t have a huge family, I don’t need one of these behemoth refrigerators with every bell and whistle but, I need a decent size standard refrigerator (I do have a dog who is fed on a raw diet which needs to be frozen).

Instead of remaining quiet and just deferring to the gentleman, as I have usually done, I attached two examples of some pretty normal refrigerators from the sites I mentioned above. I also suggested to him that he measure a refrigerator in one of his AirBNB units.

I told him that I needed the width of the opening increased to accommodate at least a 30-inch refrigerator. I also noted in my email, that I was aware that this was going to cost some extra hours of labour but that if we were going to do this renovation that we needed to do it correctly the first time rather than having to go back in later and fix it.

Half an hour later I got an email back; he had gone to his Airbnb and measured the width of the fridge and surprise, surprise this woman was actually correct. He is now tasking the subcontractor to enlarge the opening in order to accommodate the fridge I want. I also suggested that he might want to consider adding a header so that the ceiling didn’t bow or sag. I’m really pushing my luck now, aren’t I?😀

This is virtually the first time in my life that I have stood up to someone who has more experience and/or knowledge than I do and who can be quite forceful in their communication.

I am glad that I didn’t let myself get bullied by this man, because now I will get what I need and I will get it done right the first time and not settle for less than I want. I have to say it felt really really good to stand up for myself and push back against someone who wanted to do the easy thing or thought they knew better and didn’t have to do the due diligence to make sure it was the right thing. The fridge will arrive on January 25th. I can hardly wait to see what it looks like in the new pantry space.

LG Refrigerator

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