The big, cool guy in your kitchen. What’s he like?
What types are there? It cools food in the lower compartment and freezes the stuff in the upper compartment. Isn’t that what most of them do?
Sorry. I think I posted before you made this a poll.
We currently have the 20-year-old (at least) side-by-side that came with the house we just bought. This thing was probably the state of the art in like 1987, but while it seems to still works fine, we hate how narrow the compartments are. Can’t even put a pizza box in the stupid thing.
Fortunately my parents have generously offered to buy us a new one. We’re researching our options. We definitely want a bottom freezer, but the space and location of the current fridge is a bit limiting; it’s in the corner of the kitchen, right up against the wall and with a cabinet overhead. The space is about 34" wide and 68" high, so a fancy French door fridge will probably not be able to open correctly. From what I understand in-door ice/water dispensers tend to break quickly and frequently, so that feature is right out. I’m thinking a two door bottom freezer is plenty good enough. It might be nice to have the 2 freezer drawers, but I haven’t seen any models like that with the single upper door.
Side by side with Ice, water and crushed ice from the freezer door. Very large, I forget how large but it holds everything easily. I can put a six pack in the door.
I have a top freezer on my fridge but I also have a separate freezer in my basement.
Before I vote, can you clarify the wording for me?
I think I have “4 door French door (French doors, both fridge and freezer)”. Based on the option of “4 door French door (2 freezer drawers)” I believe you are counting drawers as doors.
I have French doors for the main fridge, which sits above a separate fridge drawer for snacks. Under that is a freezer drawer. So 4 door French door, for the purpose of the poll?
ETA: I opted for French doors with a freezer drawer because my fridge is in the corner. With my old side by side, I could never open the freezer all the way. Now, the freezer is a drawer, and the fridge has two doors - one of which opens perfectly.
I’ve had ice dispensers in three fridges, and none of them broke. Only the dispensing mechanism was in the door - the rest was in the freezer compartment…or, in the case of my current one, in a special compartment in the fridge.
One feature that I really like: Fold-up (or fold-in) shelves, so you can put something big in without doing a massive re-arrangement.
I spent some time at various stores and asked the sales people to show me the cool features available, so I could think about what would actually make my life easier.
There are French-door fridges that have two totally separate drawers (each pulls out separately). To me they’re a step backwards; the advantage of French doors is the convenience of short separate doors that open to a useful and efficient full-width interior. Splitting up the freezer reduces the useful space as badly as does a side-by-side. (I HATE SbS’s with a passion for their dismal space usage and inefficiency - you are forever having to move things to get other things out.)
To clarify (links to pics):
“4 door French door (2 freezer drawers)”
“4 door French door (French doors, both fridge and freezer)”
Sorry for the awkward description.
To further clarify:
Top freezer - your traditional, freezer-on-top design.
Side-by-side - with or without ice/water dispenser in door.
2 door bottom freezer - the freezer could be either a drawer or a hinged door.
3 door (French door) bottom freezer - with or without ice/water dispenser in door. The freezer could be either a drawer or a hinged door.
9-y/o side by side with ice and crushed ice thru the door, and theoretically water, too, but the water lines have frozen. I goofed when I designed the layout of our kitchen, so we can’t open the right side door all the way without pulling the fridge out. Makes cleaning it a pain in the patoot.
I’m inclined to replace it with a regular top-freezer style and have the doors swing to the left, but that has them on the wrong side for doing anything in the kitchen. It’d be easier to go back in time and design the layout the right way. 
Could be worse. Our original layout (10 years old, no modifications before we bought the house) had a narrow, shallow fridge space. The prior owners had a narrow, deep fridge that stuck out a good 18 inches. Since we had a counter-depth, wide French door, I cut away the space to make it fit all the way in (which was fortunately easy due to stud spacing, etc.)
Point being, the architect/builder deliberately made space only for a small, narrow, counter-depth fridge… in a 2800sf, 4-bedroom house. Idiots. (That whole wall is kind of a cheaped-out clusterfrack, slated for tearout and new cabinets.)
You do have to consider access and door-swing space when positioning a fridge. Easy mistake to make…
We considered the second type when shopping, particularly since the model we were looking at would allow you to use the bottom right section as either fridge or freezer but we decided it wasn’t worth the $600 price differential.
A mini-fridge about 3.5 cu ft or so.
When we moved into our house with our existing, fairly large fridge, it was too tall to fit. We had never even considered that. I had to remount the cabinets above it an inch or so higher.
Fortunately, the opening was wide enough for it. That would have been harder to fix.
Maybe I am easily amused, but
is really very funny.
Nice poll.
When our old fridge broke down a couple of years ago, we went shopping for a bottom-freezer model, only to discover that refrigerators had gotten a lot bigger in the last decade. We had to settle for a pretty basic, top-freezer model, and we measured the space very carefully to be sure it would fit…only to discover, when it was delivered, that the refrigerator was almost an inch wider than its advertised dimensions. We ended up cutting out drywall on one side of the space to make it fit. Now I’m plotting a kitchen remodel so that the next time this comes up, we’ll be able to have actual choices (and because our kitchen is generally shoddy).
Hmm. (Thanks for the clarification)
Then my fridge doesn’t fit into your list, since I have two drawers, but one is a fridge, and one is a freezer. Plus the French doors on top. I’ll vote for the 4 door (2 freezer) option as closest, in the spirit of the poll.
Now that THAT is cleared up…where’s the option for my kegerator? 
Just bought a brand new KitchenAid. French doors up top, one bug drawer for the freezer although there are three tiers (two drawers) inside the freezer.
I have a side-by-side which is about 12 years old and is starting to leak water and probably needs replacing. I have a space problem and most likely won’t be able to get the fridge I want, so I’ve gone into procrastinator mode.