Cool

When the thermometer at the cottage shows things like this (yes, it says 30.7C inside the cottage at 7:23 p.m) it's probably a good time to think about testing the jalope air conditioner mounted on the side of the lodge. This was our situation on July 8th.

H          O            T.

The kind of day you let the kids have a swim right before bed.

You remember the air conditioner, don't you? No? Hmm. Maybe you've never been properly introduced.

Go ahead, take a good close-up look. I'll wait.

Did you catch the precarious perch it's resting on? It's made of chip board (rotten from the expelled condensation). Did you notice the power cord running down the outside wall  to an electrical outlet that was installed just under the edge of the cottage? Did you see the sturdy 1x2's that are holding it up? I've often joked that the former owners added a coat of paint to the supports just to shore it  up.

*sigh* I wish it were a joke.

I truly believe that if a bird had decided to land on it, it would've just crashed to the ground leaving a gaping hole in the wall.

When the captain climbed up the ladder to start assessing the situation he realized that one of the 1x2s isn't even doing anything. It's all wobbly. *facepalm* We (the royal we again) would need to build a new shelf.

Fortunately the unit still works - we needed to test that out before embarking on the build. The first step was to get the unit out of the window and rip out the old "support" (yes, the air quotes are essential here). He had some help with the heavy lifting. I'm no help at all in that department. Here's the Captain prying out the bits of trim that surrounded the air conditioner. Please note: I said surrounded, not "supported". Layer after layer of trim was tacked in around the shelf making it tough to remove.

The captain used some leftover shelves from the master bedroom closet demo to create the platform. That saw he's using is a little scary; there's no safety switch on it. Pull the trigger and it goes! It cuts, though. That is good. Gold star to the captain for wearing his safety glasses.

Once the shelf was cut to size and painted (to shore it up some ☺) he then cut the braces and a bit to attach to the wall out of a leftover length of 2x4 from Dad's dock build.

With some help from another cottage neighbour, he hefted the unit back into place and sealed around it with some of that fun yellow spray foam stuff.

Ideally it would've been a metal shelf that wouldn't rot, but I think this solution will probably outlive the air conditioner itself. Now we have A/C if we're desperate.