I believe we had two problems. Our gasket was ripped in several places and our drain pan line was clogged. Therefore the water was frozen and backing up into the freezer. Replacing the gasket is an easy job and could possibly be done quickly enough that you don’t have to remove your freezer food items if you don’t discover additional problems during the process. The most time-consuming part is the approximately 40 screws that hold the freezer door shelf panel and gasket to the door itself. The screws in the corners are very hard to access with your fingers or tools. A magnetized screwdriver would be a big help because the screws themselves are so short and the space is tight under the gasket. If you were replacing the freezer gasket due to water dripping out of your freezer don’t be surprised if you find massive chunks of ice frozen between the panel and the door. If this happens don’t be surprised if you find your drain line is clogged and therefore water is frozen rather than draining in the back of your freezer. These are the problems that you will need some time to remedy putting your frozen food items at risk while you address these problems. If this is the case you will need to likely pull the freezer out and address the problem with the drain pan/drain line in the back of the freeze too. This does not require the door to be open and food items could be left in the freezer during this part of the repair. I have no training in appliance repair but take on projects like this. I am surprised by how easy they are and how much money I save. I wish I would’ve taken this on earlier before my floor was damaged. One more very important note. The gasket you receive may need to be re-magnetized. The replacement gasket for my refrigerator was fine and the door closed snuggly but the freezer door did not grab closed. I discovered that a very strong magnet run all along the gasket re-magnetized the magnet inside the gasket and fix the problem. I’m not sure a standard refrigerator magnet would do the trick. I happen to have an extremely powerful magnet that I could use. When your new gasket arrives, if it looks crumpled in any places or if you put its thin magnetic strip (that runs on the edge inside the gasket rubber) up against the refrigerator frame (or another metal object) and it doesn’t grab satisfactorily, maybe you should make sure you have a strong magnet in your tool chest before you start disassembling the door. Good luck- I am glad I did this myself.
Note: my trusty screwdriver and I replace the refrigerator gasket entirely by ourselves in 1/2 hr. it probably could’ve been a 20-minute job if I used my magnetized screwdriver and did not drop screws every 15 seconds. The freezer took longer because we had a lot of frozen chunks of ice due to our secondary problem of the drain pan line been frozen and clogged.