I bought that fridge and couldn't open the left door. the one I replaced was a much larger Samsung, so I was taken by surprise that this one wouldn't work!

We ended up cutting back that opening by 6"

Here's the old one. you see the wall right next to the left door?

how it looks now.

This is how much we had to clear. that door just wouldn't open more than 1/2.

The right side was ok, but I had to leave enough space (like an inch or so) between the fridge and the oven cabinet.

Thanks for the quick response! My issue is that I can’t cut down the wall (it’s for the powder bath). If you only open the door to 90 degrees can you pull out the veggie drawers?

You can see where the fridge is at. I don’t really have much of an option other than switching out the entire fridge. So if it’s open 90degrees I was hoping I could still get everything out!

Also, your kitchen reno is lovely!!

in my current (unremodeled) kitchen, my french door fridge is about 3” from a wall. like yours, the wall extends further than the front of the fridge.

i can open the door, but i can’t swing it fully open. i can’t remove the left hand veggie drawer, nor the fridge-width cheese drawer.

its a PITA, and I’m actually taking out a deep and open pantry to remedy the issue.

in short, i don’t recommend putting the fridge against a wall like that.

I have to pull the fridge all the way out to access those drawers to clean them.

That’s a pretty bad design. It’s relying on a built in refrigerator to work. Quadruple your fridge budget, or redesign the kitchen.

If the door is at a 90degree angle then would you be able to open up the below drawers better? We were planning on getting the French doors where there is a water dispenser/ice maker in the front so accessing the ice hopefully won’t be an issue. Like at 90 degrees could I access all the shelves on the inside of the door? Thank you again for all of your help!!

I know this seems odd but I’m happy to send you my email if you think a video of opening the door would help? 😅 I’m buying cabinets tomorrow from ikea so need to figure this out ASAP or just return all the appliances and get new ones. At least the fridge hasn’t shipped….

Ashwini, I added a picture to my last comment. did you see it? in that shot the door is open 45 degrees. 90 degree would be fully open straight on, like an L.

As long as you have about 2-3 inches on the sides of the fridge, the door should open fully

Our kitchen designer put a vertical pullout cabinet next to the wall and then the fridge, which allows the door to open.

ker9, this would never work for a GE Cafe. no way. Some doors swing 'in' when you open. the cafe? needs a lot more room on the side.

@Beth thank you, I saw the 45degree angle. The specs on the paperwork says it needs 5in for the door to open 90degrees so I’m trying to get 5-6in there. If it’s 90 degrees on just one side do you think that’s something you could live with?

Ker9 - I was thinking about putting something there to open it up even more than 90degrees, but it needs a lot more space, like on the range of 9-10in (I think). It just sucks because the whole point of redoing the kitchen was to gain counter space and I feel like I’m losing it. A vertical storage space is a great idea. I’m just not sure if Ikea has something like that. I think it might have to be even wider :(

Oh Beth H, since that little wall juts out to 40.5” would the handles be able to clear it? That would let me open it up a bit more than 90 degrees (I think)

Can you go to an appliance store and test it out for yourself? This could be a very costly mistake. Please don’t risk it!

Ikloes-I can’t find a store in my area that has a French door cafe fridge! Otherwise that would’ve been great.
It seems like I’d be able to get most stuff out of the door can be open to 90degrees….

I really don’t want to return the other appliances :(

Ash, here, this is what you need.

the space is 2 inches.

opened straight 90

45

on the 90 shown from above so you can see what happens to the space.

if the fridge is moved closer over the right, the door won't open

Thank you SO much for the pictures! In that picture of the close up of the hinge is that hinge moving to the side when it opens. Like is it hitting the wall? If your fridge was backed up 1-2 inches could you still open to 90 degrees?

I’m so glad I read this. I’m looking at my kitchen plans which are “finalized” and there is only 3” on the right side of fridge. My counter depth refrigerator needs about 9” to open enough to get at the veggie drawer. One of the reasons I was doing the remodel was because there was only 6” on the side and it is a bear to get the drawer out to clean, or fix the ice maker when it gets clogged up, a problem that is common with this Samsung. Beth H.,What is the make of the fridge that only needs 2-3”? If the plans can’t be worked out, I’ll have to get a new fridge.

Ash, my fridge can't be pushed back any more. The depth on this fridge is 30-31" ? you'll have to check the specs again. The further back it is against the rear wall, the more room you will need on the sides.

What is the space between the fridge and the walls/cabinet panels on either side? what does your layout say? As long as you have at least 2", you should be ok

If those 24" cabinets (on the right) are going to be touching the side of the fridge, you won't be able to open the door.

on the left side, what is the distance between the bathroom wall and the fridge ?

I should be able to get the distance between the fridge and wall to be about 5in. What I was trying to ask (but obviously very poorly) was if your wall stuck out a little bit past your hinge would you still be able to open it 90 degrees? Like would 2in still be a good clearance. The cafe fridge spec sheet says you need 5in to be 90 degrees. If practically that’s not the case then that would be wonderful! My other question was when at 90 degrees how annoyed would I be every day trying to get to something in the veggie drawer 😆

why not just move the fridge to the right a bit and put a smaller cabinet to the left of the fridge?

Very annoyed!

You'd be swearing a lot every day if you would be stuck with a fridge where you could only open the door 90 degrees. For two days right now do a trial with your current fridge, and restrict yourself to opening it no further than 90 degrees.

Have you thought about getting the deeper, non-counter depth Cafe fridge? It might help alleviate some of the problem maybe.

We have a similar situation (except that my wall probably isn't as deep as yours), and I ended up with a plan to put a very narrow pull-out pantry in that space so the fridge door will fully open. But, we're getting custom made so I could do this. IKEA doesn't make a very narrow pull out you would need.

heck, I'm annoyed w/these drawers because they only pull out so far, even w/the door fully open! can't imagine having to reach around the door to get out some lettuce!

as for the hinge/space question, honestly I don't know. I can tell you that on the left side the wall did come out past the hinge area and the door would not open, which is why we cut it back 6" (the space between the inside of the fridge/wall stayed the same). Here's the cut back. Add on 6" and thats how the wall used to be.

So, I guess that's the answer

You have to open the door past 90 degrees to get anything to slide out of the fridge because of the shelves on the door.

@Beth H.

Can you please expand on your upthread comment that even a narrow pullout between the fridge and the wall won't work with the Cafe fridge?

"ker9, this would never work for a GE Cafe. no way. Some doors swing 'in' when you open. the cafe? needs a lot more room on the side."

Are you saying that something like these won't work with this line of fridge? Why wouldn't a pullout work? We are interested in the cafe fridge and added a narrow 8" pullout specifically so the fridge wouldn't be stuck in a corner next to a wall. Thanks.

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If you need to find space to add to the left of that frig, I'd look at your base cabinet configuration. I'd combine cabs on both sides of your range into wider 3 drwaer cabs. 42" between the range and frig and 32 or 30" to the right of the range. Goung from 4 narrow to 2 wider all drawer base cabs is more usable and will save you money. And you can add a spacer to the left of the frig.

Another angle, the fridge sticks out past the pantry but fridge is not counter depth nor the Cafe model. There is a 1” gap between fridge and pantry. Total space of pantry & trim is about 13”. Pantry holds a ton and I love it.

Julieste, if u look at my first comment I loaded a pic of my before fridge. It was a much larger, Samsung. The doors opened fine in that space. I didn’t change anything when I got the Cafe. It’s a much smaller fridge (28 cubic in down to 22 cu inch). I figured, no prob. Smaller fridge doors will open fine. ( and it was 7 inches shallower!) I couldn’t open the doors more than half!
Some models have doors that swing differently. Obviously the Samsung model had doors that swung “in” or hugged the base a lot closer. The Cafe need more room for the doors to swing and clear what ever was next to it. Don’t know why. It’s just the way they’re built.

If your fridge is one of the following models: CWE23SP4MW2 / CWE23SP2MS1 / CWE23SP3MD1, the specs say 13 1/8" is needed (K). But the length of the wall might make a difference--shorter wall, less space needed.

Oh wow this is the fridge width needed to open this fridge entirely!! I switched some things up in my plan and I think I will have 11” available…,so I might not be able to open it up ENTIRELY but at least over 90degrees

I'm late to the party for commenting, but I'm glad you switched things up! Being unable to fully open the ref door would drive me crazy every day, especially in a new kitchen! I liked Fori's ideas for cabinet sizes. Sounds like you have it figured out and I'm glad!

@dan1888 when I moved stuff around to make 11in next to the fridge the fridge is now sort of in front of the island. Is that going to look odd in a small kitchen? The workspace between the counter and island is going to be 38in