When it comes to the installation of appliances in your lovely kitchen, of all the appliances that will go there, the refrigerator has got to be the simplest of appliances to hook up. Seriously, it is! But, and this is a huge BUT, refrigerators are insanely heavy, bulky, and awkward to put into a house. So many problems can happen when bringing in a new fridge into your house. You can dent your new fridge easily right when you bring it in through the front door. You can bang up your door or door trim as you bring in your new fridge too. Here, we will break down a simple systematic process on how to install your refrigerator into your kitchen.

Step Number 1

The very first thing you need to do to get your new refrigerator installed is to make sure you have a big enough entrance in your house to get the fridge in. Most French door fridges (fridges with double-door on top and a freezer drawer on the bottom) measure 33 inches wide to about 34 inches. Most front doors can handle a fridge that way getting through but to make sure measure everything up first.
Once measure, we recommend removing the front door entirely. It isn’t hard to do at all. All you do is use a hammer and a small screwdriver to simply tap underneath the hinges to pop up the pins holding the door in place. Leave the door closed as you do this to give you the easiest access to the pins and to make sure the door doesn’t fall and break something. Once the pins are out, pull the door off and set it aside.

Step Number 2

Use a dolly or moving straps to take out the old fridge. You got to options here. Moving straps or a dolly. They both have pros and cons. The straps make it remarkably easy to move even the bulkiest of objects and make it easy to maneuver around. The problem is that the two people using them have to be fairly strong. Sure, they show a small framed female helping a guy on the box, but let’s be serious here. It isn’t going to happen with a 300+ lbs. fridge! But, if you are two strong individuals, then the straps are the way to go.

Using a dolly is also very effective. Try to use a dolly with a strapping unit on it to make sure the fridge is securely strapped onto the dolly. If you don’t, you can hit a bump and have the dolly tilt to the side and off will come to the fridge! You don’t want that! A big drawback of a dolly is that although it helps reduce the weight of a fridge, it creates a lot of weird angles. Once you got a fridge loaded up on a dolly, tilting it to the right angle with the center of gravity set perfectly in the middle basically makes it weightless which is great. The only problem is that you now have it at an angle and turning it makes it a whole lot bigger to move around corners and furniture around your house.

Step Number 3

Once you move your old fridge out of your kitchen and now have placed your new fridge in its spot, it’s time to install it. The only pieces of equipment that you will need are an ice maker line and a ½ inch wrench. That’s all it takes to install a refrigerator. Most home today have a water line faucet right behind where a refrigerator goes. Remove the old water line since you always want new hook ups when installing any new appliance. Attach one end of the ice maker line (these are usually 5 feet long) with your ½ inch wrench. Tighten it nice and firmly. Next, attach the other end to the fridge itself. Most fridges will have the connection on the lower right-hand side if you are behind it and looking towards it. Again, use your ½ inch wrench to tighten up the line onto the fridge.

Step Number 4

Push your fridge into its spot and set the feet on it. Most people don’t know that you should set the feet on a fridge. Adjusting these will vary from brand to brand of fridge and based on models. To adjust the feet, simply turn them out to raise the fridge from off its wheels. You can use your hands to turn them out while someone helps tilt the fridge back. If it’s too hard to turn out, use a set of channel locks or a pair of pliers to turn the wheels out. Another type of feet adjustment on fridges are the ones that have a bolt on the front of the bottom grill cover. For these you will more than likely need a power drill or a ratchet with a ¾ socket end to it. With the ¾ socket or drill end, turn it to the right and left and it will either lower or raise the foot on the fridge to have it come off the rollers. Once you got the fridge where you want it to be, lower the feet so it will stay in its place.

The reason you do this is so the fridge no longer moves around. This also creates a small angle on the fridge that has it tilt back a bit. This allows the doors to close on their own in case a child forgets or you forget to do it. That’s it. That’s all it takes to install a refrigerator. Hooking it up is easy. Getting the old one out and getting the new one in is the hardest part.