The refrigerator was warm/ freezer back frozen

Pretty simple really after reading online some other owners' experiences. This is a bottom freezer unit. Remove the ice maker, the tray slides, and the back cover of the freezer box. In my case I had to thaw it out with a hair dryer as the cover was frozen in place. I checked the old 'stat and found it was bad; I temporarily wired the leads together until the new 'stat arrived. It does allow the refrigerator to warm up during a defrost cycle but it beats de-icing it twice.The defrost 'stat is clipped over the refrigerant line in the upper right corner of the box. Resistance was 65k ohms and wouldn't close on low temp (tested by clipping it to an exposed refrigerant line in another upright freezer) but there was no obvious damage. The one lead on the replacement 'stat has the wrong connector so you have to cut off the original lead from the old unit and splice it on the wrong lead on the new one. I used an epoxy sealed heat shrink type butt splice. Reassemble and let it run. One word of warning: be careful tightening any screws as they will strip easily