Sub-Zero repair in Concord

Two kitchens, one town

The antique houses along the older roads keep their kitchens in a rear ell or a former summer kitchen: low ceilings, a chimney breast eating into one wall, floors that have moved a quarter of an inch over two centuries. A modern built-in goes into a joinery run made to fit the room rather than the appliance, and the clearances end up wherever they end up.

West Concord and the post-war streets are a different problem entirely. Those kitchens were opened up in a renovation, and the refrigeration is usually a pair of panel-ready columns set into a wall of cabinetry with the grille hidden behind a decorative panel.

What the houses do to the cabinet

Two faults come out of that far more often than anything else. The first is heat: a condenser that cannot breathe runs the compressor longer, and a compressor that never stops is a compressor being aged deliberately. The second is geometry — a cabinet standing on a floor that is not level has doors that will not pull square against their gaskets, and the seal fails at one corner first.

Neither is a reason to replace a cabinet. Both are measurable in an hour, and both are usually cheaper to correct than the conversation that starts with a showroom.

• Condenser packed behind a joinery panel with no air path above it
• Fresh-food side drifting warm while the freezer holds its setting
• One door corner frosting or sweating where the gasket has lost its pull
• Compressor audible from the next room in a house that used to be silent

Getting a column out of an old house

Rear-ell doorways in Concord are narrow, thresholds are raised, and the floorboards under a full-height column have often never seen daylight. Panels and trim come off first, board goes down over the boards, and the run to the door gets measured before anything is tipped. If the route out is tight, saying so on the phone changes what comes on the van.