I knew that some fridge doors were reversible but, because mine didn't have any holes for the handle on the reverse side, I figured mine wasn't one of them. Turns out the screws that hold the handles on my fridge are self-tapping, meaning they make their own threaded holes as they are drilled in. Swapping the orientation of the door took 20 minutes. While all fridges are different, here's a rundown of the basic process on my fridge, a simple two door, freezer-on-top model:
• Cover the floor with a cloth or towel and empty the fridge and freezer doors of their contents.
• Carefully remove the plastic screw coverings. Set aside.
• Using a Philips head screwdriver or the Phillips head attachment on your drill, remove the screws from the hinges. Work from the top of the fridge down. Once you have removed the top hinges, the doors should lift off, making the bottom hinges easier to remove. Carefully set aside all screws and bushings.
• Set the doors carefully on the towel covered floor.
• Remove the plastic screw coverings from the handle's screws.
• Remove handles.
• Reorient handles to the opposite side. Check their positioning before you drill them in.
• Replace the hinges on the opposite side, working from the bottom up. On newer models, the hinges can be moved directly from one side to the other. On my fridge, the hinges needed to be flipped upside down so that the doors would hang correctly when replaced, the door dropped onto the bottom hinge and then the top hinge screwed into place. You may need a second person to hold the door while you tighten the screws in place.
My kitchen has become vastly more pleasant to work in. And, oddly enough, the room feels more welcoming.
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Does anyone know if this can be done with a side-by-side fridge? If it were possible, I'd like the fridge handle to be on the side where the freezer is.
This is a great and useful post. There's one thing that has to be considered though, and that is that the insulation strip might have gotten smashed over years of use so that when you change the door over to the other side, it leaks. This is what happened to me. I think you can probably buy replacement strips but am not sure of the cost or the amount of work involved. (I ended up needing to replace the fridge anyway... which actually may have been because it got overworked because of the leak!)
Also, there was one screw I just couldn't get out. Probably a big strong guy could have done it but none were around. I ended up cutting the darn thing off with a sawzall, LOL! Damaged the finish, but it was visible only when the door was open, so I painted over the marks with some high-gloss white paint. Anyway, the upshot is, things that should be easy ... in my case at least ... usually aren't. Sigh...
Those insulation strips are wicked expensive.
the best way to get a proper door alignment is to lie the refrigerator on its back, that way when you rest the doors on it they are horizontal and parallel with the ground, gravity is in your favor. Of course when done you should wait a night before plugging it back in, especially if it's and older model.
And if your refrigerator is from the early 80s as the one pictured appears to be, do yourself a favor and buy newer used model out of craiglist. The $100 you spend will probably be saved in one year of electric bills.
Working kitchen triangle = bliss!
Tip: when doing a job like this that requires keeping track of lots of little fasteners, use an empty ice tray or muffin tin to organize.
Oh how I wish I could do the same with my microwave. Why must they all be left-hinged?
"the best way to get a proper door alignment is to lie the refrigerator on its back..."
...on its coils?
Great way to destroy a refrigerator.
What's with "gifted"? Gift, the noun, derives from give. Is there something wrong with saying "a friend moved and gave me hers"?
Not to be a curmudgeon, but a little piece of me dies every time someone turns "gift" into a verb instead of using its perfectly good verb form, "to give."
Okay, carry on.
lol re: gifted..it has really becoming popular over the past couple of years...I heard it a while ago and it sounded strange to me...yeah whats wrong with giving someone something?..but I've just gotten used to it...and still haven't used it myself.
Our fridge opens "wrong" and I wish Sears had told us when they brought it in the house that we should change the way it opens. I had no idea and now I think I'll just wait until we get a new fridge. I guess that's what reading the owners manual is for lol.
I so want to do this to my fridge, but the previous owner screwed the door in so tight that it's impossible to get it off. So disappointing.