Since it is the week of Black Friday, I’ve taken advantage of some insane promotional deals at Best Buy to replace all of the appliances at the lake house, in both kitchens. Essentially, best buy has a 40% off promo going for most appliances, with the added kicker that you get $50 gift cards for each appliance in certain size bundles, up to a certain number of appliances. When buying two kitchen’s worth of appliances, the secret is to break them up into groups of at most three, so you maximize the number of gift cards you get and can use the gift cards for the next batch of appliances. I structured it so I got $300 worth of gift cards on top of the 40% savings, and was able to use all $300 of those gift cards on other appliance purchases. Pretty awesome!
Here are the current appliances, and what they are being replaced with:
Getting the oven to fit is a bit of a challenge, since the old double oven is a width that is no longer standard. It is bigger than a 24″ but too small for a modern 27″.

Obviously a 27″ is much more desirable because it accommodates normal size pans, so I am going to do some minor carpentry work on the current cabinetry to allow it to fit. Also, instead of a double oven, I am going with an oven on the bottom and a built in microwave on the top. This allows me to not take up valuable counter space with a microwave, and is cheaper than a double oven that will never get used (we don’t need three ovens in a vacation home).
Most of the appliances are going to be installed after I’m back from vacation in early January, but the dishwasher is going to get installed the week after Thanksgiving. The refrigerator in the upstairs kitchen has already been installed; it was a little bit of a challenge because of how big it was, but the installers were able to get it into place after taking the doors off.
The refrigerator contents that I had to transfer to the new appliance definitely made it clear that this was a vacation home, and made me chuckle:

It will certainly be nice to have all new appliances, and it will be a good birthday present to have them all installed the week of my birthday. It will make next summer on the lake even better as well!