Some thoughts on the undercounter freezer, as you described it: 1) Was this designed for built-in application? You would know by looking for a grille at the bottom front of the unit for air intake. If there is no airflow there, it was never designed to be built-in under the counter 2) Is it designed for residential use? There are virtually no (I honestly can't name one) undercounter freezer unit that meets energy standards. What this means is that its working harder, and, putting off more heat. 3) How much space do you have for ventilation? While your GC has said it is probably enough, because of how cool a freezer gets, you need much more ventilation that you would believe I do agree with a previous poster; if it is getting that hot, get it out of there before it causes damage to surrounding cabinetry

Mtnrdredux, and that set up works well for your family of five? We will soon be a family of 5, 3 boys, eat mostly fresh food and lots of veggies. We ended up going with a 36" fully integrated all refrigerator subzero and separate freezer drawers, as well as a deep freeze in the garage for frozen produce, meat, etc. We are in the building stage still so I'm not sure it will be the perfect setup, but it wasn't a decision I made lightly. In the end the refrigerator/freezer units simply didn't have adequate produce storage for the amount of full height refrigerator space I wanted, and we really don't use much frozen food on a daily basis so the freezer drawers seemed like a perfect fit. Not sure that helps.

We are going to have Perlick freezer drawers. It took our project a long time to get under way, and it is taking an even longer time to get started. I guess, such is life. So, I can't actually tell you yet, whether we'll like them. But when we were doing our research, they stood out as some of the nicest drawers. They also have the biggest capacity. Of course, they aren't exactly cheap. And we are getting two next to each other, which adds to the cost. The only bit that will take getting used to is the fact that we will no longer have an ice maker in the freezer. Fortunately, there is another fridge with an ice maker in the in-law unit. Our family only ever needs about one load of ice cubes per month. So, I plan on having a storage container for ice in the Perlick and refilling it as needed. No big deal. And it might actually be fresher ice than having the ice maker refill the top layer continuously.

We honestly don't use our freezer all that much, but it does get some use. So, we didn't want to sacrifice prime real-estate in the kitchen. Also, our kitchen is two floors above the garage; so placing the freezer into the garage would have been awkward in day-to-day use. As others have found out, going for a non-standard configuration is expensive. But apart from the cost, I would always do it again. The result works so much better for us. We have a 36" counter-depth all-refrigerator. It's the main appliance for food storage, and we couldn't be happier with it. This type of fridge is simply a much better configuration and makes it so much easier to keep things organized neatly. We also have undercounter freezer drawers at the perimeter of the kitchen, where they are accessible when needed, but where they don't get into the way. Works great for us. Splitting the two appliances made our kitchen and the slightly challenging floorplan much more functional. In the garage, we have a commercial all-refrigerator that is used when unloading groceries from the car. Very happy with that decision. And buying a commercial model made things more affordable while still getting excellent built quality. The only downside with this overall configuration is that we don't have an ice-maker in the freezer drawers. But we have another small fridge/freezer in the in-law kitchen. Every couple of weeks, we use it to make ice cubes and then transfer them to a storage container in the freezer drawers. Our family doesn't use that much ice, so this works fine for us. But others might need a different solution (there are drawers with ice makers, but the ice maker takes up a lot of space).