On Wednesday it was really gross out so I left work at 1pm and put in for vacation leave instead of trying to work from home. I don’t like working from home – when I’m home the last thing I want to do is work! Due to the craptastic weather it took 40 minutes to drive home instead of 20. For the first half of my ride I was behind a line of cars with a plow & sander at the head. Then, about a mile from my house, I saw blue lights and a downed telephone pole – yikes:
And yeah, I took photos while driving, which I’m not proud of… I don’t even talk on my phone in the car, let alone snap shots, but I was going soooooooo slow.
So I spent the rest of the afternoon finishing the bedroom AC box. I attached the rigid insulation panels to the doors which I’d painted black on one side and white on the other:
I love how they came out:
I had a lot of trouble attaching the doors to the cabinet. It took 2 attempts and I finally gave up and “cheated” by placing thin cardboard panels under one set of hinges to keep the doors from being so tight they wouldn’t shut:
I was surprised how well it worked!
Here’s how the AC looked before the box and after – much better:
As with the other 2 boxes I used caulk to “glue” it to the wall and also bolted it to the wall with an L-bracket at the top.
This is the only box where the doors open all the way, due to wall and ceiling constraints in the living room & girl cave:
I love how it looks:
Hooray for finishing my first project of 2018!
In cat news, Birdie is spending more and more time downstairs, either in the front hall or in the living room with us:
And she and Darwin are getting closer & closer. They often sit and stare at each other, having long, silent communications. And sometimes when she’s playing on the floor he’ll lay down nearby and either gaze at her or roll onto his back and look at her upside down. It’s awesome!
They both LOVE to play and I’m hoping that eventually they’ll play together.
In very exciting news, hubby and I figured out we can both retire from work on the same day: February 3rd, 2028. I’ll be 57, which is the minimum age required to retire from Federal service, and hubby will be 59½, the minimum age to retire from the public PRIVATE sector [typo in my original post] without penalties. It’s SO exciting! To celebrate having less than 10 years of work to go, I installed a countdown timer which you can see at the bottom right of my website:
So in less than 10 years, we’ll be retired and moving to the Big Island, Hawaii 🙂
I wish you a lot of health,so you can enjoy Hawaii.
Liebe Grüsse
Danke, Daniela!
Your air conditioning boxes are genius. Love the look and the concept. Ours is out of the window but still sitting on the bedroom floor all winter.
As for retiring, I’m hoping to stay in my job a while longer but to scale it down as the years go on. Jo @ Let’s Face the Music
Thanks, Jo! I hope your trip was wonderful, I look fwd to reading all about it! Your job sounds wonderful, especially if they still have the chef that makes all the little deserts and the fresh juices!
The last box looks just as good as the others. I will file away the cardboard trick in case I ever need it. So happy that Darwin and Birdie are growing closer and that you get to retire young! I am hoping to “retire” in less than ten years. I will keep working, but part time for myself. I just have to get the house paid off first!
Thanks! Working for yourself sounds good to me! I will definitely do some kind of part time or volunteer work after I retire, but nothing that requires 40 hours a week with a phone ringing off the hook!
So sweet to see Birdie and Darwin getting to be friends!! We were so impressed with HI that we’ve talked about where we could live there (Maui is far too expensive), but I don’t think that’ll happen–too many pets to move! I had to reset my retirement counter several times, but it’s finally down to 30 working days!!! 🙂 Your last 9 years will fly by!
that is AWESOME you’re down to 30 working days – OMG! super exciting 🙂 maui is crazy expensive. i think the big island is the most affordable, but everywhere there is expensive. i like the fact you can buy many acres of land on the big island for the same price as a few hundred feet on the other islands. we can’t wait to live there and swim with turtles every day. you guys definitely have a lot of pets to move! you could always charter a boat 🙂
I am pretty sure that pets moving to HI have to be quarantined for a few weeks. Not willing to do that!
no, if they see a vet and get their shots 6 months prior to the trip, and then get a vet signoff right before you go, they don’t need any quarantine! i guess if your flight gets in at night you might have to quarantine them until morning when the airport people get there, but if you arrive before 5pm they don’t need anything and can go right home with you 🙂
Oh good to hear!