Getting a fridge for free.........what should I do with it?

Hey everyone, I'm new here, but I've been a lurker for a month of so. I just posted a thread in the beginners brewing section so check it out if you'd like. I'm getting a used fridge this week that works great for free. My father-in-laws buddy just wanted to get a new fridge so he's given this one to me. It's your standard fridge, freezer on top, fridge on the bottom. Just wondering if I'd be able to use this for lagering as well as storage or should I just get an external temperature gauge if needed and use it for just a plain fermenter to keep my temperatures as consistent as possible? Thought some of you could give me some ideas as I know some of you would love to have a fridge just show up at your house for free. :rockin:

buy the temp controller. your beer will improve SO SO much using it as a fermentation chamber.

Honestly I'm not even sure how high the temperature gauge on a fridge can go? Obviously with the external temperature gauge you don't have to worry about that and that's awesome. How hard are these to hook up to fridges? Not a great electrician or anything, but I can pretty much figure out anything if you give me the time to look at it and form a plan of attack. I need to find out what the temperature is in my basement during the winter time since it's obviously gonna be colder than the rest of the house.

There's a Johnson controls model that is sold by many brew shops that works by simply plugging the fridge into the controller, and the controller into the wall. It has a long probe lead that you can poke through a small hole in the door seal if you want to.

A fridge's built in control isn't very well suited to fermentation - it's inexact and has a pretty wide swing. The average thermostat in a fridge probably won't go as high as 60 degrees.

Thanks for the info Pint, I found a thread late last night that talked about the controller and it sounds very easy. I'm going to get the controller and turn the fridge into a fermenter, but always have the option to use it for Lagering if I want to. From what I understand Lagering is done a cold temps correct?