Did You Ever Just Want to Screen?

The Casita screen room that we inherited last year was not the utopia we thought it might be. Upon closer inspection, we discovered that many of the support poles were broken. It wasn't too much of a bummer since my in-laws rescued a screen house that their neighbor no longer wanted and gave it to us.

Before bringing the Casita screen room to the dump, Jim harvested all the screens because they were in beautiful condition. He used some of this screening to replace a broken screen in the girls' bedroom window and the screen in the screen door.

The girls' window was easy, Jim was even able to reuse the spline. The screen door was a bit of a challenge since the screen portion is not a standard one that used spline. Jim had to buy some thin molding to create a frame to hold the new screen to the wood frame. It came out great, even the 45 degree angled corners thanks to a hand me down miter box and saw. Both screens look great and we've got plenty of screening left over for the next time a child or dog wrecks a screen!

Jim tackled another project that thrilled us all after the 92 degree heat and humidity that we experienced earlier this week. He installed a practically new hand me down air conditioner that my brother and his family no longer needed. My complaint with window air conditioners has always been that they force you to use them by not allowing you to open the window they are installed in on days when you could get by without the ac. Jim came up with the perfect solution.

He installed the ac into a window that didn't open. That might sound odd but anyone familiar with houses that were once summer camps know that nothing is that odd after a while. To minimize loss of light, Jim used plexiglass to cover the space over the ac rather than closing in the space with wood. The only money spent on this project was a mounting bracket to support the ac (we had the plexiglass) and I think that is money well spent. The unit is powerful enough to cool the whole house. We only needed to use it one night but boy did it make a huge difference in the quality of our sleep. Thanks Lou and Melissa!