Sunday, October 26, 2008

C'est fini!

Well, well, well, we did the swap from treehouse to the nether apartment. I took some pics today of the treehouse, in its finished state. It looks pretty good. Especially noteworthy are the new treehouser's furnishings: it looks good stark. I have too much crap for the treehouse to ever have looked this good with me up there.

First the images with decent exposure:



And then the image I should have taken the time to correct in photoshop:






I would say the only thing lacking is some really colorful art work on the walls.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Monday, October 13, 2008

More Treehouse Fun (MTF)

Dedication

This entry is dedicated to Bengeance, who I believe is the sole subscriber to this blog.

It's been awhile

So the big news is that we are leaving the treehouse, which has meant that after a long hiatus, we need to return our attention to the last few unfinished items. 

Enter: Operation Cool It.

We did a little exploratory drilling in the kitchen wall, which conveniently has a bit of exterior wall that is not roof—a north-facing gable end that is visible from exactly nowhere. The gable end is in the middle of the house, facing to the rear, you can't see it from the street, the yard, or even the roof of the garage. 



After toying with the idea of inserting a little window and then using the attic space to install a mini-split A/C unit, we decided on a new approach: "quick, "easy" and "cheap." A thru-the-wall A/C unit (much cheaper than mini-splits or central air) would be tucked into the wall space, all we needed was to find a small unit, right? The plans seemed simple enough, and as an added benefit, so I thought, a thru-the-wall unit would be cheap, as cooling season has left our northern regions.

Of course this is life, and nothing works the way it should. I called around for the cheap, off-the-shelf A/C unit and discovered that they are off the shelves: none in stock at the big boys (Home Despot, M'nards, Sears) or the little local guys. I spent a long time calling around until finally I got a number from a guy, whose number I got off a random website, and hooray they had one! The only problem is it was in the distant suburbs ("Guam"), and that my husband's car conveniently died the day before, so I had to drive him to work in Minneapolis (gnarly traffic), then loop around the interstate outer ring (gnarlier traffic), and then get utterly hopelessly lost in the gridlessness of suburbia. But I did eventually find the appliance shack, purchase the only thru-the-wall A/C unit in the whole of the metro area, and was only 2-1/2 hours late to work. So then the demo happens...

And the unit is too big...

So more demo happens...

To be continued...