The unnecessarily huge Curing Cabinet...

So once upon a time, Tyler moved into an apartment in Santa Barbara with Kyle Spencer. It was a magical time filled with lazy beach days and beers to be had everywhere; but the most mystical place of all was the second fridge. The second fridge wasn't any ordinary cooler, no it had a special purpose. Its job was to slowly craft delicious pork pieces into even more savory delights. This fridge was a curing cabinet. But before too long a terrible thing happened. The person who the fridge belonged to came and took the fridge away, spirited it off beyond our reach. Since that day I've vowed to have that feeling again, vowed to own my own magical fridge. Finally that day has arrived.

Beyond the heartfelt tale of lost love I've just thrown your way, lets get down to brass tacks on the W's of my adventure. (what, when, where, who, why) To start at the beginning here would be an insult to the people who got this whole thing started off in my mind. Like I said before I was living with Kyle who as many of you know is a great chef and knows some other great chefs as well. If it weren't for their setup it may have taken me decades to even consider doing my own cured meats. As poetic as I can paint a picture of charcuterie in my mind now is, when you first encounter it it's hard not to see a locker of lukewarm meat and not be a little grossed out.

Then what occurred is the same thing that happens before all of my impromptu projects of needless extravagance, I took one look at that fridge with plug in temperature control and said, "I can build that." The gauntlet had been thrown, but of course I couldn't just build the same thing. I'd have to build it better. This led me to the majesty of Google and the abundance of so called knowledge their lies within. I found a couple of so-so sites where people had made their own, but what struck me first was that they were completely different from what I'd seen at our house. First off they had humidifiers, freaking humidity controllers, and fans, and sensors, and some weren't fridges at all, and, and...

When I'd come back down from sensory overload I settled on two things, that Ben Starr had the easiest and most comprehensive post to follow, (seriously there are points at which I'm only going to reference and link this page because I'm too lazy to retype it and I think you should be aware of where the credit truly lies) and that this guy xutfuzzy gets style points like this guy who just saunters away after almost becoming a cars afternoon snack.

Ok so its not like I had to have a glass door fridge, or even a good one. I just wanted to start small. Maybe a step up from mid sized dorm fridge? As it usually does, lady fate decided she was going to kick the door in on my goals of mediocrity. Enter craigslist, you know that website that at first glance seems really helpful, like that is a great idea right? Then you realise 90% of your interactions with people who, you'd assume are somewhat stable normal people like yourself, turn out to be either delusional or trying to scam the hell out of you. For my part I was sure it was the latter when I stumbled across the ad that changed my salami future forever.

"Large refrigerator, need to get rid of" $40 - Scam right? but it had a picture, so why not take a peek.

What! No way, it's like a unicorn, I'm having trouble looking at it directly. So I call, wife is sick of the huge fridge that has never worked and has been sitting in the garage for the last two years. Husbands back is out, so he can't help with loading, he also has no idea whats wrong because he never tried to fix it. If I come pick it up and bring 40 bucks its mine. Oh and I'm also told I'm going to need a really big truck.

So I start running down my pros and cons. Pros, look at that magnificent leviathan of a fridge, and its dirt cheap, I mean those tiny dorm room fridges I was mentioning before were going for more. Cons, It's huge, It's broken and I don't know the first thing about fridge repair, I don't have anyone to help me move tomorrow, I own a Tacoma which last time I checked was not a really big truck. My disbelief in the truck argument aside I decided to stick the consequences and pull the trigger.

Now I had a fridge and a plan. I got home, righted the fridge and let it sit for a couple days. After tipping them over you have to let all the oil and gas settle inside otherwise you can clog the compressor or worse. This was the last time I did something I was even remotely qualified to handle, besides the paint. Disclaimer: Do not try most of what you are about to see at home. If you do, you didn't read it here, and I didn't suggest it. Especially if your significant other is pissed about it.

Day three I plugged it in to get a feel for what I was up against. Electrical? Gas? Compressor? Holy hell I just bought a glorified box? Everything fired right up, lights, compressor, the works. The thermometer had been ripped out so the temp gauge was reading error but the most alarming thing was the hissing sound coming out the back. Bingo, two little holes, one in each access line. At this point I got a little scared off and decided to call an expert or two. I pulled the model info and hit the phone. "Commercial fridge? Yeah we don't do those." "Yeah we could come out, it'll be $75 for a service visit, then $250 to charge it, if thats the problem." "We don't do service calls on the weekend, unless you want to pay extra."

No thank you. It was time to bullshit my way through. Step 1, read the manual. Thankfully True MFG has all of their manuals online so I was able to get the spec's for the fridge really easy. Step two, learn enough about appliance repair to get this thing cranking. YouTube is chock full of these how to's, ranging from incredibly annoying to refreshingly helpful. Step 3, actually start the transformations from sweet fridge to epic meat locker.

Sorry this first post has been so wordy and void of photos. Tomorrow I'll post some actual build photos along with a description of the repair debacle, and almost accidentally offing myself in the process.
Best Wishes - Tyler