Comments on: How to Make Old Appliances Look New

By: C&M Domestic Appliances

C&M Domestic Appliances — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 19:33:37 +0000

I’m interested to hear that in the US you can walk into a hardware store and purchase new door seals for your fridge. In the UK all fridge & freezer door seals have to be ordered percificly to fit the different makes and model numbers because they are different sizes, colours & even fit in different ways.

By: C&M Domestic Appliances

C&M Domestic Appliances — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 19:24:55 +0000

It’s very interesting to read that in the US you can walk into a hardware store and purchase a new door seal for the fridge or freezer. In the UK we have to order the correct seal via the make & model numbers, all seals are different sizes, colours & are even fitted differently depending on manufactor.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:29:26 +0000

I found something similar to this as another alternative to replacing your appliances over at http://www.applianceart.com. They sell magnetic and vinyl covers for dishwashers in the form of art, pics, patterns etc. It doesn’t look like a cover up like this stainless but more a way to distract people from noticing how ugly your old appliance is.

By: eSpares

eSpares — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 09:13:44 +0000

I really like the idea of the contact paper to give the appliance a facelift. I’ve not seen that idea before and it’s really clever.

In the UK integrated appliances (built into cabinets) are very popular and I wonder if there is a simple way to make a freestanding appliance into an integrated appliance.

By: LFNYC

LFNYC — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 15:45:44 +0000

live in a rental apt with a narrow galley kitchen. Recently, we put up new wall paper and a new tile floor in the kitchen and planned to get a new stainless or black fridge to replace the ‘almond’ color one…although it still works fine. A search of the web and local appliance stores showed that new refrigerators (any color/any price) no longer are made in the size that fits the space in our kitchen! A new one the same size would jut out an additional 3″…a smaller apt size model would be 1/3 the size. Grrrr.

I decided to see if the contact paper trick would work, and went to the local hardware store to pick some up. The stainless cp was about 4 X more expensive per roll than the matte black, so I bought a roll of matte black for practice.

The black looked so good that I ended up buying another roll (for $3.49) and finished the job. I think that the matte black is much more ‘forgiving’ than the stainless would be. I had to seam the front in 3 places, but the seams really don’t show. Using smaller pieces also makes smooth application easier. The only problem I had was with the corners at the top…once again, I cut seperate little squares to make the corners and it barely shows.

Hint…CP works best on a flat plane. First I did the perimiters, then I did the front, allowing ~1/8 inch of foldover over the edges. The seams are not perceptable.

Of course the light color gaskets show from the side, but the edges came out so cleanly, that it really doesn’t look bad.