New Air Conditioner: Keeping Up with the Joneses

My neighbor put in a new air conditioner. It's about 8 feet away from mine. When I was out in my yard in the heat, I heard a slight sound and noticed that new air conditioner. It was so quiet. I was envious immediately. My 1995 air conditioner sounds like a jet. When I have it on, I have to turn the TV up to SCREAM level. I'm certain my neighbors hate me (for many reasons, this is just one).

I was so envious that I invited myself in their house to look at the unit. I don't even know their name. (I know, I'm rotten. The worst part, I still don't know their name. But I do know the make and model of the air conditioner.) They told me that they ordered it from Amazon and installed it themselves. Hmm...

I can order from Amazon, I thought. But I can I install a 100 pound unit? I thought that might be a bit much for me. So I order it from eBay and call out somebody to estimate the installation. $300. What? The unit only cost $479 and it comes with everything you need to install it but caulk.

Well, that was enough motivation for me to try to install it myself. I cut out all the old caulk and pulled and pulled and pulled. Man, that old unit just fit in that sleeve. Here it is out with a nice hole in my wall. Luckily the sleeve was still in great shape.

I pushed the new unit over to the window, installed some foam spaces and then pushed and pushed and pushed. Man, the new unit just fit in that sleeve. TIGHT on the sides. 

I added more foam than the old one had and caulked like a champ. It was easy to caulk inside the house, hard to get to the bottom on the outside of the house. I had to lay completely flat and I got covered in dirt and eaten by mosquitos. I even replaced the outlet. Nothing peeves me more than painted outlets and this one had 20 years of paint on it (including mine).

I still have to get some help getting the old one out of my house. There's no way that I could lift it by myself. Luckily, I have a big, strong friend with a truck. 

That was yesterday. Today, I can barely move. Wow, at my age that much work it's a lot of strain on your body. It bugs me that as I get older, my recovery time is much longer. But apparently it doesn't stop me from doing this stuff!

And there you have it. I just had to keep with Joneses (whatever their name may really be). You'd think being a Jones would make it a non-issue. You'd be wrong.

Refinished Fireplace

Back in 2004, I bought an electric fireplace off of Craig's List. It was in a newly remodeled home and the guy hated it. The builder made the mantle to fit around an old chimney stack. It was a beautiful mantle with lots of detail made out of solid oak. There was dental moulding and fluted molding. But like the guy who sold it, I hate new oak. It's so bright. And for some reason people love to put a gloss varnish on new oak so it's always ridiculously shiny.

Here's the Craig's List image:

I had to trim off the sides to put in my condo.

The new oak made the piece seem huge, so I stained it with blue wash stain. I claimed it took up too much visual space in that golden oak color.

And it was like that for 9 years. Then the other day, I looked at it and decided to remove the wash and put on some American Walnut stain, I like to think of it as an antique oak color since it's the color oak turns after 50 or so years. I have a ton of old oak in my house so I thought it was time to get it to look like all the other pieces in my house.

For $30, I bought some stripper, steel wool, steel brushes, gloves and stain and went to work.

Here's what it looks like in progress. Since the mantle and fireplace were grouted to the stand I made for it out of MDF, I decided to do the job in my house (all windows open of course). It would have been better to do it outside. Since the blue wash was a stain, it wasn't hard to get it off. And as a bonus, it left the wood a little grayish (which means it looked aged). And I didn't have to work so hard to get it all off, because I wasn't looking for bright new wood.

When I stained it blue, I thought I would always keep it that way because I knew the dental moulding would be hard to strip. And it was the hardest part of the whole job. But the steel brush made it much more manageable. I highly recommend the steel brush. It was a life saver for this job.

And here it is in it's new color.

I think it does take up more visual space in the wood tone, but now it matches all the old oak I have collected over the years and it's looks like it belongs.