Easy Ways To Hide Your Appliances

Do you ever get tired of your appliances or appliances in general? What about other necessary fixtures around your house? The way they look, or the fact that they never seem to change? We know we do, and we know that some of our clients do as well. This week we’re taking a look at different ways you can change the look of your appliances and how they fit into your kitchen. 

There are three different ways so far that we’ve found to change your appliances.

Exchange It

The first method is the most straight forward. You can get rid of the appliances you have and exchange them for alternate models that will fit with what you already have. This might involve buying specially built appliances. However, you won’t have to worry about messing up the decor you’ve spent time building your dream kitchen. So while not the most cost-effective, this one can be the easiest. 

• Some companies offer refrigerated drawers rather than a full fridge, which is what is going on here. It looks fantastic, and you can keep everything close to hand. We think it would work best if you have a larger kitchen, though, or perhaps a hanging rack for your pots and pans? 

• This one is definitely custom. Not only are you working with what you already have around you, but you’re building a shelf that will pop out only when you need it. It can also still be used for storing baked goods.  

• What are the panels under your sink for? Can anyone honestly think of a reason, other than decoration? These tiny drawers solve that issue by giving you somewhere to store your sponges that are easy to clean and hide away when you’re done. 

• We cannot tell you the number of times we’ve smacked our elbows on the knife block, or a hand or a plate. You get the picture. By creating a small sliding drawer at the end of your countertop, you add more storage space to your counter, and you don’t have to worry about smacking the knife block.

Work Around It

The second method is to have custom cabinetry (or something similar) that is built around the appliance. Depending on how handy you are with tools, you can either do this yourself or have someone else build them for you. These aim to blend the appliance into what you already have, making it, so they don’t stand out. Again, cost is a factor, though, because you’re working to build around or with what you have.

• Do routers count as appliances? We’re not sure given how everything is connected to the internet these days, but we can all agree that they are undoubtedly ugly. Why should you have to look at them then? Cover them up by making them look like something else, like this row of books, for example. 

• Bamboo screens are one option; you can also use other types of screens, such as fully wooden ones or fabric ones to hide things, such as washers, dryers, radiators, etc.

• This company will create a drop-down section within your counter where the appliances hide until they’re needed. Definitely a custom piece. 

• Built-in refrigerator that perfectly matches the surrounding cabinetry. If you look closely, you can see how it’s been affixed to the refrigerator doors without having to alter the fridge itself in any fashion. 

• This one is a little bit of using what you already have and a bit of custom cabinetry to leave your kitchen clutter-free when you aren’t using them. 

• This refrigerator has been cleverly disguised to look like an icebox. This one definitely can be done, but it’s going to take a bit of ingenuity to make it work. 

• All three of these are the same basic concept. Taking a cabinet you already have and adding something to it so that it serves the purpose of keeping your appliances out of the way, while still easily accessible. Each one is slightly different, but that goes to show how versatile this idea can be. 

• Adorable tiny custom box for your mixer? Check. 

• Can we all agree that breaker boxes are atrocious? What are you supposed to do if it’s inside your home in a critical room, though? Or if you’re looking to refurbish your garage into a new room?  Build a custom box around it and make it not stand out. 

• Continuing on with creating custom cabinets, why not hide your cat’s litter box? Give them somewhere quiet to go to the bathroom, as well as keeping you from having to smell it all the time.

• Other than the stove, do you see any appliances in this shot? This is all custom cabinetry built around the fridge, dishwasher, and any others that the owner has. Even the oven appears to have been covered over. 

Cover It

The third method is for those of us who aren’t /quite/ in love with our kitchen or need a change of pace. Maybe you’re like me, and committing to just one way of looking isn’t your thing? Or you want to test out a change before you make it more permanent? Try some of these alterations and see how they work for you! 

• While this one isn’t exactly changing the outside appearance of what you have, it is hiding it away within what you already have, i.e., one of your cabinets. Having a trash can that stays out of the way? Provided it’s on heavy-duty rollers, yes, please. 

• This is the perfect way to update your home, whether you own it or rent. This particular version is moisture and steam resistant, too, which means it’s excellent for your kitchen or bathroom. 

• This one doesn’t just have to be done with doorknobs or faucets. You could also do this with the hardware for cabinets, or the handles on your appliances. 

• Granite paint kits are fantastic. However, they can also be easily damaged if you don’t seal them right or choose the wrong one. Make sure that you do your research beforehand so that your hard work will last for years to come. 

• This kitchen is an excellent example of creating a panel that sticks to the front of an appliance, in this case, the dishwasher, as well as reusing a space to make something new. 

• Both of these continue on the trend of creating a panel that covers the appliance to blend in, without needing a custom cabinet around it. 

• All of these are using different materials to go and give your appliances a makeover. Whether it’s electrical tape, paint or cling film, you can get all sorts of ideas by looking on the internet. 

• When it’s not in use, why have your tv just sitting there? Why not hide it and have a beautiful piece of artwork instead? 

• Cords are a fact of life with electronics. But who says they have to be ugly? You can use cord wraps like these, or get inventive and use painters tape to create your own designs. 

• Plain doors are the worst in this blogger’s opinion. They need depth! Fortunately, it’s surprisingly easy to do that with just a bit of paint and masking tape. 

Thanks for joining us this week!  If you have other ways to disguise an appliance or update their look, let us know in the comments below or over at our Facebook page. 

Tovala Smart Oven: The Strangest Oven We've Ever Seen

Working with appliances and having a wide customer base,  we see all sorts of things. We often get calls to work on appliances we might never have heard of before. Some of them are nifty, such as a Northstar Keg Fridge, or a 3 in 1 Breakfast Master. Others have been downright strange.  The Tovala Smart Oven trends towards the ‘strange’ as far as we’re concerned. One of our team members brought the Tovala to our attention and we knew we had to take a look at it. 

Tovala started off as a meal delivery service. They would send you meals, you would scan them using the scanner on their oven and you would get perfectly cooked meals. Perfect! No more guessing and hoping that your settings were the same as the ones that the company used to develop the food. Then with their latest version of the oven, they have made it so that you can scan  ‘hundreds of brand name grocery products—like Eggo® Waffles and Pop-Tarts®!’ At least in theory, this can save you a lot of time. Much like with their own meals, they are taking the guesswork out of things so that you can focus on what you want to get done. Their app will even tell you when your meal is done cooking. If you’re a bit old-school though and prefer not to use the scanner, you can still use the Tovala toaster oven. It has more traditional functions such as baking, reheating, and steaming. 

It sounds like a nifty idea! Hundreds of products and all you have to do is scan them to get them cooked to perfection. But, who’s idea of perfection is it? When it comes to food, the ‘perfect’ amount of cooking is up for debate. Just look at the way some people take their steaks after all. 

Now, that is everything that Tovala claims your toaster oven will do. What they don’t talk about is what they’re going to do with your information. Many ‘smart’ devices including smart assistants such as Google and Alexa don’t tell you what they do with your data. You have to go hunting in several different places in order to find out.  Our question then is does Tovala keep your information for when you cooked that chicken at  2 am? What about when you had a rough day and stress baked seven batches of cookies? Even after looking over their page, Tovala isn’t clear about this. 

Their website only says that you have to use their app to connect the oven to your wifi or use any of the advanced features of the oven.  If you want to cook something from their hundreds of recipes? They know about it. If you want to scan in your box of Pop-Tarts, or one of their premade meals, they know it. Companies such as Google have been brought to the court of public opinion on the fact that they use your data to select ads for you. Many people aren’t happy about that. How would you feel about having more ads in your Tovala app for particular foods or suggestions for certain medications based on the foods that you’re eating? The possibilities are there, and sadly, Tovala isn’t telling us what they’re doing. 

A second issue is the matter of hooking the oven into your WiFi. As you may remember from our post about the Samsung smart fridges, hooking appliances up to your WiFi can be a security risk.  If Tovala chooses to stop updating the features and security measures on their ovens, it can be an opening into your home or office’s network.  

What you probably shouldn’t use it for :

Some of the things you probably shouldn’t be using a Tovala for, based on what it is: 

Cooking a large chicken or other piece of meat. - You can only get so large before different areas are cooking at different speeds.

Trying to cook a cheesecake. - This is just personal preference, but the fact that the Tovala is capable of ‘steaming’ foods leaves me a little leary. I’ll use it for fish after an experiment or two, but I’m not putting my cheesecakes in there. 

Melting plastics- There are all sorts of crafts that you can do using a toaster oven. Given the various features of this one, and that once it’s been used for plastics, you shouldn’t use it for foods again, I wouldn’t do this. 

Thank you for joining us this week! If you’re having issues with a major appliance, let us know, we’d be happy to help you get it back into shape. If on the other hand, you have a strange appliance that you want us to take a look at, post it in the comments below or over at our Facebook page. We love the chance to hear what you’re thinking about and the strange appliances you’ve encountered.

Ultimate Appliance Shopping Guide for 2020- Part Two

Welcome back, ladies and gents! If you were with us last week, we went shopping for a full suite of new appliances. Our blogger went shopping, looking at things the way people usually did and came up with all sorts of interesting appliances. 

Several of our repairmen, as well as the owner of the company, commented after reading last week’s post that they wanted to purchase some of them as well! 

 This week we sat down with our professionals to see what their thoughts were. We’re going to see what our professional repairmen came up with as their picks for the best appliances that money can buy. 

Refrigerator

Approaching the refrigerator first, like we did last week, this is actually the only one that our professionals couldn’t agree on. “There isn’t just one model or even brand, we’d feel comfortable recommending. There are so many variables that go into selecting a refrigerator; we could spend weeks debating all of them. The most important thing is to find one that has really focused on the necessary features more than the gadgets. It’s not that you can’t get ones with gadgets, let’s face it that’s inevitable these days. However, what should matter is the care that has gone into making the different important points of your refrigerator; the compressor, the seals, how well the ice maker and water lines work. Does it hold temperatures well? Is the water filter easy to access and replace etc? 

Washer

Model: Speed Queen 3.2 Cu. Ft. Inch Top Load in White 

Brand: Alliance Laundry Systems 

All of the bells and whistles have been stripped away for this one leaving you with a dependable washing machine. Simple to set up, simple to use, and reliable seems to be the consensus among buyers. It’s got a deep drum, minimum controls, and is top loading. 

Dryer

Model: Speed Queen 7 Cu Ft Electric in white

Brand: Alliance Laundry Systems 

This dryer matches the washer, and much like it is built for quality and endurance over gadgets. As our professionals put it, ‘there aren’t any electronic displays to burn out, cause fires or malfunctions, and you don’t have test it seven different ways to find out if the board has died or if the dryer did. 

Cooktop/ Oven

Model  KitchenAid 6.4 Cu. Ft. Slide-In Electric 

Brand: KitchenAid 

This range is the best of both worlds. Simple and straightforward but also has several bells that will make any at-home chef happy. It comes with True Convection as well as a steam rack, and also is capable of converting your conventional recipes to convection for you. 

At the same time, though, it isn’t loaded down with dials, controls, or superfluous gadgets. It does what it is designed to do and is the best at it. 

Dishwashers

For our dishwashers, we had a tie in terms of who thought which appliance was the best. 

Model: Built-In Dishwasher with Hidden Controls and 3rd Rack in Stainless Steel

Brand: GE

“This one has one of the better rack configurations that we’ve seen. It means that you’re more likely to be able to fit your dishes and less likely that they’re going to be damaged. It also has a bar handle, which is more durable than the hidden latch models. It’s also surprisingly quiet.” This was our professionals’ opinion, but I’d like to point out something else that caught my eye. It has a wash zone feature. This means that you can choose to wash only the upper or the lower racks, thus saving you water if you use it. 

Model: 39 dBA Dishwasher with Fan-Enabled ProDry System

Brand: KitchenAid

Our second dishwasher has many of the same features as the previous one, although it has a few interesting ones as well. Like the GE, this KitchenAid has a third rack, a bar handle, and is remarkably quiet. It also comes from a very reliable brand. Unlike the GE, however, it has foldable tines on the top rack as well as a set of durable plastic pieces that fold out to add extra space for small items such as sauce dishes or ramekins. 

Thanks for coming back this week ladies and gents, we hope you found this series of posts useful. If you’re not ready to replace your appliances and instead want to repair them, give us a call! We want to help you live better.  

If you did, please consider heading over to our Facebook page and posting what other series or posts you’d like us to do. 

Dishwasher Dangers, What Doesn't Belong

What is it with people and putting things in dishwashers that will damage them? All over Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter people talk about weird ways to use your dishwasher. What  they don’t consider is whether you should be putting these things in there. 

Shoes? Ok. That one sort of makes sense, if you squint. But engine parts? Keyboards? Not only are these going to be damaged themselves, but they’re just as likely to do damage to your dishwasher. We put together a listing of things you shouldn’t run through your dishwasher and just how bad it’s going to be if you do. 

Easy Peasy - Grab a dishrag and clean it out.

Anything with Adhesives- This one makes  sense, both people doing it and why you shouldn’t. You want to get those jam jars clean before you store them away, or return them. But many adhesives are going to break down when exposed to the heat in your dishwasher and release from what they’re on. If the adhesive is water soluble, not a big deal. You might need to check your grate, but it’s not going to kill your dishwasher. Some though won’t be, and instead of leaving globs of adhesive on the dish in question it can end up stuck to other dishes, or elsewhere inside the dishwasher. 

Hollow handled knives- This one is a dual threat. If the knives are larger ones, then the blade can be an issue rattling around inside the dishwasher. The adhesives, like we mentioned above, can also be loosened and lead to the handle coming off. 

Computer keyboards - Why? Really, why would anyone do this. But apparently people have. Yes the keys will come out clean, but water and soap will remain in the board and you will have fried your keyboard! 

Fish - Again, this one doesn’t make any sense to us. Some people will ‘cook’ the fish in the dishwasher wrapped in tinfoil (which shows up further down the list). So this is bad for two very different reasons. 

1. You have no guarantee that you’re cooking the fish fully so that all pathogens are killed. No one wants Salmonella. 

2. Dishwashers aren’t tested for their ability to cook. They aren’t intended to cook, let alone cook food evenly.

These two things together you’d likely end up with a mess of fish fat and oils all over you dishes, tinfoil residue throughout your dishwasher and improperly cooked fish. Not a good start to a meal. 

-Oh No- Get someone else with special tools to clean it. 

This is the level when you take a  good look at your dishwasher, the remains of material inside it, and decide ‘Nope. I need someone else to get this taken care of.” 

Plastic tupperware- We all do it. You get plastic tupperware, it’s the end of the day, why not throw it into the dishwasher? It says it’s dishwasher safe right? Or you’re pretty sure it does. Well the truth is that many of them aren’t, despite saying that. Plastics, especially the thinner, flimsier ones, can easily melt in the heat of your  dishwasher. From there, the most common place for it to end up is ‘draped’ over the heating element of your dishwasher. Unless you immediately get the dishwasher open after running and everything emptied out, it’s going to cool and solidify. At that point, it’s a pain in the neck trying to get it out. Can it be done? Yes. Absolutely, we even have a  guide for it. However, it’s a pain in the neck. 

Aluminum- Once praised for being a ‘rare’ metal, now the most useful material in our kitchens. But much like adhesives, the heat of a dishwasher can truly mess up your aluminum. Whether we’re talking about putting a pie tin, a baking container or tray, they don’t fare well. First off, you’ll almost certainly end up with ugly marks on your dishes, silverware and the dishwasher itself. Also if the aluminum is thin enough, your dishwasher can easily destroy it. Which will end up with aluminum flakes spread throughout your dishwasher.  

-Red Dead Dishwasher - It’s toast

Engine Parts- Yes people have actually done this in an attempt to clean off certain parts. Which does make a certain kind of sense. However, your chances of getting that grease out of your dishwasher? Not very high my friends.

Takeout containers- Styrofoam. What happens when you put it into a water filled space? It floats! What about dealing with heat? It melts, twists and catches on fire. So putting it into your dishwasher can end in several bad ways.  If you’re lucky, it’ll deteriorate and you’ll be trying to clean out particles from throughout your lines. If you’re unlucky it will melt and fuse to your dishwasher. 

Kitchen knives-  we’re not talking about utensils. We’re talking about meat cleavers, chefs knives, bread knives etc. These are the larger knives you use for prepping food and people tend to place on the top rack. The problem is that when the knives are rattling around during the wash cycle,  they can nick the coating on your dishwasher or the racks. Once that coating is broken, water and minerals can begin to attack the exposed metal and begin to rust it. When rust begins to take over your dishwasher, you’re counting down the time till it’s dead. 

(The detergents will also dull your blades over time and you’ll need to get them sharpened more often.)

If you need help with your dishwasher, feel free to schedule an appointment. We want to help you and your dishwasher get back on good terms. 

Have you ever had something fall apart in your dishwasher? Let us know in the comments below or over on Facebook 

Additional Reading

Dishwasher Deep Dive