It was busy couple days here at the mansion. The broken (and also no longer needed) heat pump and its indoor unit for the living area were uninstalled yesterday, and he also took away two other air conditioners Nigel bought on Trade Me. They were for our last house, but he never got the chance to install one, and we didn’t even know if either worked. They were useless for me and taking up space in the garage, but now they, too, are out of my way.
I have to patch a hole in the gib (aka plasterboard or drywall), which was used for the power and coolant tubes to enter the house. Similarly, there’s a companion hole in the exterior brick where the tubes and wiring entered the house from the exterior unit on the patio. There’s also a small hole where the condensation tube exited the house, and a few small holes for the screws that held the protective plastic sheathing carrying the wires and coolant tubing.
He then put some aluminium tape (the sort used to seal ducting joints) over the hole inside until I can get to the store and buy a patch kit (it’s not a very big hole). On the outside, he left the sort of cowling that the protective plastic sheathing went into (it covered where the coolant hose and wiring passed through and bent to enter the house, and it also kept water out of the hole). He put aluminium tape over the bottom of the opening to keep bugs, birds, etc, from getting in.
I’m going to steal a bit of insulation from the attic to insulate the wall (I only need a very small amount), and patching the small holes in the brick outside will be easy enough, but I’ll have to do some research before patching the bigger hole in the brick.
I was (not very) surprised to see that the air conditioning was installed before the exterior of the house was painted (but after the interior was). The builder gave me the name of the specific colour of white, but it turned out that there’s no such paint colour in NZ. I plan to have the whole exterior of the house repainted (or more?), so for now I just need to use a little white house paint—and sealer, since whoever painted the house never sealed or primed the brick first, which is the entire reason I need to have the house exterior re-painted so soon. Still, my little “paint patch” will protect the brick until the whole house is painted, and I don’t mind doing that (I actually love painting), however, it never occurred to me that I’d have to do that, and it’s a little annoying. Oh, well.
Being me, I decided to start cleaning up where the old heat pump was, including pulling out weeds I’d never really been able to get to before. This was in the hot afternoon sun, which wasn’t ideal, but I was determined to make a start.
The wall where the inside unit was looks weird now that it’s empty, and the picture I had hanging in that spot may look too small, but I was going to move pictures around, anyway, as part of my refresh. That refresh is the next thing on my agenda for now.
However, I’ve added a new project I’ll hire people to do: I’m having the kitchen range hood moved up—and the company who did all this air conditioning work for me can do that, too (they’re also electrical contractors), so in the new year I’ll get that sorted—and then a new backsplash behind the hob, and that’ll be something I’ll do myself or hire out.
Finally, yesterday the front lawn was mowed by someone other than me for the first time ever (not counting the one time that Hamilton City Council mowed the verge part—it’s their property, and they were mowing the verges of empty sections and did mine, too) a month or so after I moved in and before I bought my lawn mower in March 2020. He did a good job, and a much better job with the line trimmer than I ever did. There was some Kikuyu sticking up in a couple spots at the edges, where neither the mower nor line trimmer could get it, so I pulled them out by hand. Other than that, there wasn’t anything I felt I needed to do—which was the whole point of course.
I did a quick look at my stock of DIY supplies, and I have the primer I need (and ample paintbrushes, rollers, etc), so I just need to get stuff to patch the holes, and I expect to do that on Monday. We’re not supposed to get any rain until Tuesday or Wednesday, so I have enough time to finish the outside in good weather. Even so, I plan on repainting the entire wall of the house facing the patio (only around four metres or so), but I’ll talk about that in more detail when I do it so it’s easier to follow (I realise that with so many projects in play, things can get confusing, because they certainly do for me).
Onward.
No comments:
Post a Comment