I bought the Jenn Air 42 inch French Door Refrigerator JF42NXFXDW for my complete kitchen renovation. We put custom cabinetry throughout and added the custom panels to the refrigerator as well as other appliances. I wanted the refrigerator to be built-in with the cabinetry fully integrated so that you weren't able to tell there was a refrigerator there. That has not happened. The hinge is definitely a flush mount hinge. You read correctly. The Jenn Air has a flush mount hinge. You need to know that the Kitchen Aid Refrigerator does NOT have a flush mount hinge. (though Jenn Air and Kitchen Aid are owned by the same company). They LOOK like the same refrigerator, but the hinge assembly is different. Problem: After going round and round with my contractor, we determined that the online specs for the Jenn Air panels are incorrect. The panels don't cover the hinge and are about 3/4" too short. So you submit the specs to your custom cabinetry company, they make them to Jen Air specs only to find that the custom panels aren't wide enough to cover the hinges. At that point, unless you Redo your custom panels (expensive proposition) there is no way can they be fully integrated into your cabinetry. The Kitchen Aid 27" warming drawer specs are incorrect as well. I am currently in conversation with Jenn Air (Whirlpool Corp). We'll see where this goes.

I feel strongly in favor of the 24 inch wide fridge drawers for usable space. I would find 15 inches not worth the trouble. And shelves v. drawers? No contest. Drawers are so easy. I am too old to get on my knees to look at the bottom 2 drawers. It's only 9 inches different. I have Elux drawers-pricey at 2k but a big splurge and very, very worth it. Also, there is no worry about door clearance. Now, where do you find the 9 inches? I don't remember your plan, but, what width are your pantry pullouts? I have 2 pullouts, each 15 inches wide. My pullouts replaced a 36 x 24 black hole pantry. I have way more groceries now, then before. Each pantry door of mine can pull 450 pounds. If your pantries are wider, they may not be able to pull all the stuff. Marcolo, I know you are a two person household, and I bet dollars to donuts that I have more pantry crap than you. We are now a 2 person family but I have not yet come to terms with the fact that my 'teenage' son is now 51 yrs. old and I don't have to feed him daily. My dh and I are very frugal and we buy way too much stuff, b/c it's on sale. Just today, I tossed 3 cans of tomato stuff that was 2 yrs. out of date. I buy groceries for planned but still imagined dinner parties, probably never to happen (deteriorating health)! You have real dinner parties so you use up the food. Check your drawings and tell me the width of pantries. And that's just one place to look for space.

Andrew, I have a 3 year old KBFS20EVBL3 that is a shallow cabinet depth model. Not the same as yours, but a KitchenAid with French doors. I, too, did not want water or ice through the door and we wanted an easy clean black flat finish. It also hit a $1800 or 1900 price point I think, which fit in my budget. I like the interior layout, the quality of the inner components and the usable capacity for such a small cubic foot fridge. Nothing on the inside broken yet, which is amazing from 4 abusing boys. If we didn't have a fridge in the garage for beverages it would be a rough go for a family of 6. That said, if I had wood floors, it would have ruined them a hundred times over. The drain line is prone to freezing up, depositing water floor side. I deal with it, and flipped flat on my back one time when not thinking about it as a walked by the fridge in the dark one morning. Also, in my case, it sits out the thickness of the doors beyond the cabinet, maybe 2.5 inches, plus the handle depth, into the room. I would certainly not call it flush, but less obtrusive than the mega depth fridges of today. I also had to have my cabinet altered to make room for its height, it was about two inches taller than my 12 year old Amana 25 cubic ft side by side that crapped out one day. Would I buy again? Maybe, but the leaking can be a pain in the you know what, so if the Electrolux doesn't leak I would go that route. Steve

Hi there helou! We have the 42" built in version of the KA side by side and have been using it since November. We were lucky to get the floor model for half price at a local sale so we bought it months before the remodel. We have not experienced any of the problems that soigne mentions. Ours has a "max cool" button that if you load it up with a bunch of warm items or leave it open for a while, you just touch the button and away it goes - no problem bringing it back to cool quickly. We love the operation of the drawers - much smoother than others we tried and it seems to keep our food very well. I was looking at the french door model, but the 42" can fit a full size cookie/catering tray in the frig side -no problem, that was my main goal and we saved $4,000 buying it on sale. Plus, after realizing I could fit such large size items in this frig, I preferred not bending over to get stuff out of the freezer all the time.