Selling a Fridge Shouldn't Involve the Fire Department

Lowe's called me on Wednesday to let me know that our new fridge was in stock and wanted to set up at time to deliver it. Because Brian and I both work full-time, that dropped the availability for delivery to the weekend. I scheduled it for between 8-10am on Saturday morning.


We had debated about keeping the old fridge in our garage, but finally realized that it would be an energy suck and since there are only 3 of us in the house, would be completely useless.


Brian wanted Lowe's to haul the old one away, but I thought that we could make a few bucks by selling it on Craigslist. Of course, I won that discussion. Brian's only concern was that he didn't want the thing taking up room in our garage for weeks while I find someone to purchase it.


I knew that it wouldn't take long to find a buyer, but I was even surprised when only 5 minutes after it posted, I received a call from Debbi about buying it and having it hauled away around 9am. I was thrilled. In the mean time, I moved some items in our garage so that the old fridge had a spot.


I received a call from Lowe's at 8:15 saying that they were on their way. Yea!!! A new fridge and $75 for the old fridge. I was thrilled.


The removal of the old fridge went like clockwork. Installation of the new fridge, on the other hand, included removing our front door and some of the hardware from the fridge. No biggie. It looked perfect in our kitchen.


Lowe's had me sign the delivery information, and shortly afterwards, I received a call from Debbie saying that the people that would be helping them move the fridge would be at my house in an hour. Great.


When the 2 men arrived, in a rented Home Depot truck, Debbi came to the door and let me know that they were ready to haul it away. About 10 minutes later I hear "Oh Shit!!" and a big thud. Sam was asleep on the couch, so I couldn't run out, but I did open the door slightly to see one of the men holding his knee and the fridge on it's side in the driveway.


My guess was that the fridge fell on the guy (that was confirmed later). I was worried to run out there and offer any type of assistance, because this happened on my property and I was worried about any legal ramifications of assistance.


Brian cam home shortly after, looked at the scene and came to the same conclusion. The rental truck was there about 25 minutes before I heard a fire engine's siren around the corner with an ambulance right behind it.

I bet our neighbors are thinking that we are trouble makers. Within the first month of buying our house, we already have a fire truck and an ambulance out front. At least we got to meet one of our neighbors that was coming home, and whose path was blocked by Thornton's finest. Her name is Grace and she lives diagonal from us.

It seems that these 2 guys were trying to lift the fridge vertically (without any help) instead of putting it on it's side. Brian helped the guy push it into the truck on it's side when he got home.

After Sam woke up, the activity was still going on, so I took him over to the fire engine and he read each letter that I pointed to. Good boy! He loves letters and numbers.


He was so excited to see these vehicles up close, but didn't like how loud they were driving in.

The guy's knee was wrapped up, splinted and he was put into the back of the ambulance and taken away. I bet there were a bunch of neighbors looking out their windows, but didn't come out to see what was going on up close. I hope that we don't hear any more about it. I'd hate to have to talk to our insurance agent about a claim on our property.

Welcome to the Neighborhood!