October 26, 2018

Random Inspiration

This post honestly has no rhyme or reason. Every once in awhile, I scroll through images on Google and pull a few that I really like the feel of, so here are three of my favorites from my recent search!




October 15, 2018

Vintage Wooden High Chair

I found this adorable 1940s-50s high chair in the thrift store the other day for about $15, and I couldn't believe it! I've seen similar ones online going for $200+, so I had to get it.





You do have to be careful with older high chairs, since most of them do not meet the safety requirements for today, but it is possible to modify them so they meet the standards. For anyone who is interested, you can check those out here.

October 14, 2018

Project 62 Favorites

Target launched their first collection of the Project 62 brand last year, and it was love at first sight for me. The mid-century inspiration was really strong and felt very authentic. Awhile back, I shared my favorites from that collection, but I thought it was about time to do it again and include some of the newer items. So without further ado, here are the things that stood out the most to me!





The biggest draws for me are the new wall art options. Especially ESPECIALLY that first one with those abstract shapes, clean lines and ivory background. 😍 It's a huge statement piece too, at 24"x36"! But I also love tapered legs and angles, so that tends to be a theme in the furniture that I like.

May 3, 2018

Vintage Fridge Energy Cost



From what I can tell so far, our vintage fridge is actually slightly more energy efficient than our current fridge. And for those of you curious about exactly how much that is, I'll break it down.



Our current fridge is a 1998 GE that, according to a sticker on the inside, should average at 697 kWh per year. If you multiplied that by the price of $0.11 per kWh, you would get $76.67—the cost to run the fridge for an entire year.

Using my Kill-A-Watt meter, I got a readout of 0.06 kWh from the Coldspot. This is a readout for a period of time, so I made sure that it was exactly an hour. I multiplied that by 24 to give me kilowatts per day (1.44), multiplied that by 365 for kilowatts per year (525.6), and lastly multiplied it by $0.11 to get the final result of $57.82 per year. That ends up being a $18.85 decrease from the GE fridge.

Just to double check, I ran the GE fridge through the Kill-A-Watt meter too, and I ended up with a readout of 0.08 kWh. At that rate, the total comes to 700 kWh per year which is consistent with their 695 kWh per year claim. You will see from the numbers below that the Coldspot's compressor actually takes a little more energy, so I can only guess that maybe the auto defrost in the General Electric fridge must play a big role. Or maybe I need a longer period of time to get a more accurate average. Or maybe it does a better job of keeping things cold, so it doesn't need to run the compressor as often. Or maybe the Freon refrigerant is simply more efficient.

Some comparisons...

Vintage Coldspot Fridge - No auto defrost
  • Kill-A-Watt reading: 0.06 kWh / 526 kWh per year
  • With the door open and the compressor on, the fridge uses 184 watts.
  • With the door closed and the compressor on, the fridge uses 142 watts.
  • With the door open and the compressor off, the fridge uses 41.3 watts. 
  • With the door closed and the compressor off, the fridge uses 0 watts. 

1998 General Electric Fridge - Yes auto defrost
  • Kill-A-Watt reading: 0.08 kWh / 700 kWh per year
  • With the door open and the compressor on, the fridge uses 170 watts.
  • With the door closed and the compressor on, the fridge uses 133 watts.
  • With the door open and the compressor off, the fridge uses 38 watts. 
  • With the door closed and the compressor off, the fridge uses 0 watts. 

It was really cool (hehe, pun intended) to see the results first hand. I did a lot of reading with various opinions about energy costs, and now I have some hard facts to go on. Of course it's going to vary from fridge to fridge. And I heard that those made between the 60s and 80s will tend to have the worst energy efficiency, so beware of that. But I hope this can provide some helpful information for others considering an old fridge or even just curious about the cost.

What's also interesting is that we don't need to set the temperature as high as we thought. We wanted to be on the safe side so we put the dial right in the middle, but this morning our milk was partially frozen. I ordered a fridge thermometer that should get here in a few days and will help us figure out exactly where we need to set that.

Yeah, so we were lucky to get a fridge that still works really well and has a great seal on it. The only disadvantages are that the freezer space is really limited (so we may consider getting a small, separate freezer for our garage) and the lack of auto defrost means that every once in awhile we're going to have to let our freezer thaw out (I've heard using a hair dryer really helps, and gives you a good excuse to clean out your fridge anyway). But other than that, the energy cost looks good, food is staying cold, the fridge layout is great and this thing is a TANK. I slid it across the floor to get it into the kitchen and there wasn't a single scratch. I love the way it looks in our vintage kitchen. So for now, we're going to keep it and see how this goes!

If you'd like to see pictures of the fridge (she's a beauty), you can view my older post here.