It is done all the time.I will tell you most fridges require more than 1/2 “ air space and you will need to have at least enough space to get your hand in to move it out to clean. This pic shows a fridge installed with a 36” cabinet above and the 2” space on each side it looks fine and allows good air flow

Thanks for the reply. The real problem I have is that a 36" opening doesn't work well with our layout. I'm trying to reconfigure things a bit to make it work, but was hoping that we could somehow adapt the 30" to work over the 33" refrigerator.

Hey there Meaghan, I'm having the same problem. Did you figure yours out? I can actually get a 36 inch panel but would rather go with a 33 inch fridge.

We bought 5 IKEA drawer fronts and built a custom open cabinet for above our fridge... our problem was the over fridge cabinets were too tall with the soffit we have.

Guys, I want to jump in on this thread. Has anyone solved this problem in a way they liked? I see these options:

1. Build out the 30 inch cabinet
2. Use the 36 but only attach panels below
3. Get a custom option
4. Combine parts of two base cabinets?
5. Make a custom option

This is what we ended up doing. 30" cabinet with 3" filler to the left. If I look at it too closely, I think it looks a bit off but most of the time I don't even notice and it was the option that worked best for us. Hope that helps.

This IKEA kitchen has a 33" fridge with a 36" bridge cabinet over the top and fillers on either side of the fridge made from matching cover panel material.

Another option is to join a 15x20 and 18x20 wall cabinet together over the fridge. The doors would be asymmetrical, but might look alright if the fridge also has asymmetrical doors (ie side freezer type).

I'm wondering if it's possible to use a base cabinet over the fridge. I need something 30" high and I don't want to use two 15" high cabinets.

@Jeff Imming where did you get the filler material for the front and side of your fridge?

You can buy 30" high uppers. That's pretty standard actually. For filler material, you buy "wall filler" from your cabinet manufacturer, and it typically comes in 3" or 6" wide pieces. You can rip it to the width you need on site.