Refrigerator choice: CH or EU

Food & Drink, Events and Entertainment
1
My refrigerator is the classic Swiss style: it's installed in a wooden closet that you can't see it's a refrigerator until you open the wooden door.

We wanted to replace the refrigerator as it's too small, then was told there are two system: CH and EU.

The CH system has a drawer below the baking oven to warm up the plates. It's smaller (55cm wide) and EU system is bigger (60cm wide) which doesn't have drawer below the oven.

We don't use that warm-up drawer in CH system and want a bigger refrigerator. The staff from FUST told us we have to hire a carpenter to cut the wood if we want a higher/bigger refrigerator. I wonder if that's really necessary, does anyone have experience about it? Should we take this chance to change it to EU system?

Also I wonder how difficult it is to install a refrigerator like that, do we have to hire a technician to replace it?

2
Installing a refrigerator is a piece of cake if you know how to do it.

Installing a 60 cm wide refrigerator in a receptacle which is less than 60 cm wide needs some adoptions. Either chop of the side of the refrigerator (not so wise), or make the receptacle bigger if possible.

If you cannot make the space bigger you are stuck with whatever fits in that space.

But a refrigerator with a warming drawer ???

3
Installing a 60cm wide refrigerator into an existing Swiss 55cm kitchen sounds like an utter nightmare.

If you need a bigger refrigerator it's probably quite a bit easier to fit a higher 55cm model.

Unless you want to replace the whole kitchen. In this case I'd go for 60cm all the way.

BTW: Do you own or rent your home? If you rent then making such changes without involving the landlord is a very bad idea.

4
The real answer actually lies in the chassis of the exisiting kitchen, and whether you can enlarge the 55cm hole to 60cm hole.

Some kitchens you can, but some of the more traditional ones would mean completely dismantling the kitchen and re-installing the chassis, which would be very expensive.

If you're not sure, it would pay to have somebody come in and look, cheaper in long run.

5
If you want some ideas/input from people, a few photos of the fridge/heating tray closed and opened are really necessary. If there is a opening above the fridge it would be good to take photos of that as well. Plus some dimensions would be good.

For example, as we have, you can go for just a fridge (no freezer) to have more room for food since we have a second fridge and a big freezer in the basement.

P.S. If you are talking to FUST you are probably paying about 20-25% more than buying via a supplier on Toppreise.ch

6
If all your cupboards are CH 55cms wide you are a bit stuck without major work. However if another cupboard is 60cms wide, it is sometimes easier to change the location of the fridge and get the door cut down. I have used nettoshop.ch for kitchen appliances and found them good but I always call or email before ordering to make sure the unit I want is available. Their website is a good resource to research fridges as different manufacturers have different internal volumes for the same size space.

7
Do you have any room for a free-standing fridge/freezer? If so, that would definitely be the easiest option. You can keep the existing one so you've got two.

Otherwise, it's quite difficult to suggest anything without any photos of the kitchen.

8
Photo is attached. The door at the left is the fridge, it has some space above and below, currently both are storage space.

The heating drawer is below the oven, I was told it's used to warm up plates/bowls.

I went to FUST is just to get some advise, if I know what product is feasible, I usually use toppreise to get some sense of prices.

9
Love that: Going to get advice for free and then buying elsewhere. No wonder businesses begin to go online only.

10
I would guess you could only easily fit a 55cm here, the work to make it 60cm would ruin the rest of the kitchen and cost a fortune.

11
Agreed. Unless you're willing to change the cabinets (all of them on that wall which are left of the Oven) your only real choice is to get a higher 55 fridge than what you currently have and pay for the (significantly less invasive) modifications to your existing cabinets.

The other possibility would be to fit a fridge only unit the same size as your existing, and sacrifice some other (bottom row) cabinet to install a freezer only unit.

12
There is a loophole depending on how strange the universe is.

13
I don't understand why you need to cut the wood.

I suppose what you have now is the middle door attaching to the fridge door.

So you can get rid of whatever is behind the lower and top doors, get a fridge which is as tall as all 3 doors and attach all 3 doors to the fridge.

It might look strange when you open the middle door and all three will open at the same time, but hey it should work.

14
^^^^ghetto but I like it.