Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Where I Beg For A/C
Air conditioning, that is. God, it's going to be a scorcher today - over 100 - and we don't have central air. Or window air. Or any air to help make one cool except for a crappy fan that used to belong to my parents in the 80's. ONE FAN. Ok, that single used-to-ocillate-but-broke-and-now-faces-permanently-off-to-the-side fan and two ceiling fans: one in the master bedroom and one in the room we use as an office. And that, my friends, constitutes my arsenal for combating the heat in my house. My house that has 3 different levels of living space and over 2600 square feet. Wanna come over and bake cookies? On my floor? It's that hot.
And oh yeah, no curtains or shades on the main floor! Whee! I'm the woman lying prone on the floor in the semi-basement playroom using a puzzle as a pillow and trying to make dinner using the kids play kitchen.
My dining area and family room face due east, which means that the intense morning sun beats down into that room. There are two big windows from the French doors, and then two wide windows on the same wall. Target had a
sale recently (I love Target!) on bamboo roman shades (cheap!) and I got some for the doors. They don't block the light, just filter it, but it helps a little bit. But those windows - ! I rummaged through my linen closet for some old sheets - anything - I could use to block the sun. I unearthed two old window swags from about 3 houses ago. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I bought them because they're really ugly. Very thick fabric and dark, dark hunter green with - wait for it - best part - fringe. The kind of fringe you'd expect to see on Grandma's couch along the bottom. From back in the day. You know that fringe? Well, these swags were edged with it. And I bought them anyway. I KNOW. I hope my taste has improved since then.
Anyway, these ugly quasi-curtains would definitely help block the sun that's turning my house into a slow-cooker except for one thing: no curtain rods. But! Wait! I am creative! And desperate! I have a bunch of T-pins left over from my days of working in a cubicle and those were the only things you could use to hang stuff on the soft, gray, padded fake "walls" in cubicle-land. And they were hard to come by, for some reason, where I worked so I hoarded them. And then took them with me when they laid me off because HA! THAT'LL SHOW THEM! And for the last 6 years those precious T-pins have been carefully tucked away in my sewing box because you just never know when you'll need to pin up a hem and be forced to use T-pins or something. But now? T-PINS SAVE THE DAY! With merely 12 T-pins I am able to impale the ugly curtains and tack them to the top of the window molding! Voila! T-pins are mighty strong. And versatile. Who knew? I knew I'd kept them all these years for a reason. Ha!
So now my family room is a cave. There is NO LIGHT WHATSOEVER penetrating those windows. And now our family lives like trolls, in the dark, in the middle of a sunny summer day. We have to turn on a light to even distinguish between the remote controls because it's so damn dark in there. But if it helps keep the house a few degrees cooler it's worth having to see those ugly curtains pinned to the windows as the focal point of the room.
And the towel that's tucked into the top of the window in the master bath to shade things in there. Need a window blocked from sun? CALL ME!
And oh yeah, no curtains or shades on the main floor! Whee! I'm the woman lying prone on the floor in the semi-basement playroom using a puzzle as a pillow and trying to make dinner using the kids play kitchen.
My dining area and family room face due east, which means that the intense morning sun beats down into that room. There are two big windows from the French doors, and then two wide windows on the same wall. Target had a
sale recently (I love Target!) on bamboo roman shades (cheap!) and I got some for the doors. They don't block the light, just filter it, but it helps a little bit. But those windows - ! I rummaged through my linen closet for some old sheets - anything - I could use to block the sun. I unearthed two old window swags from about 3 houses ago. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I bought them because they're really ugly. Very thick fabric and dark, dark hunter green with - wait for it - best part - fringe. The kind of fringe you'd expect to see on Grandma's couch along the bottom. From back in the day. You know that fringe? Well, these swags were edged with it. And I bought them anyway. I KNOW. I hope my taste has improved since then.Anyway, these ugly quasi-curtains would definitely help block the sun that's turning my house into a slow-cooker except for one thing: no curtain rods. But! Wait! I am creative! And desperate! I have a bunch of T-pins left over from my days of working in a cubicle and those were the only things you could use to hang stuff on the soft, gray, padded fake "walls" in cubicle-land. And they were hard to come by, for some reason, where I worked so I hoarded them. And then took them with me when they laid me off because HA! THAT'LL SHOW THEM! And for the last 6 years those precious T-pins have been carefully tucked away in my sewing box because you just never know when you'll need to pin up a hem and be forced to use T-pins or something. But now? T-PINS SAVE THE DAY! With merely 12 T-pins I am able to impale the ugly curtains and tack them to the top of the window molding! Voila! T-pins are mighty strong. And versatile. Who knew? I knew I'd kept them all these years for a reason. Ha!
So now my family room is a cave. There is NO LIGHT WHATSOEVER penetrating those windows. And now our family lives like trolls, in the dark, in the middle of a sunny summer day. We have to turn on a light to even distinguish between the remote controls because it's so damn dark in there. But if it helps keep the house a few degrees cooler it's worth having to see those ugly curtains pinned to the windows as the focal point of the room.
And the towel that's tucked into the top of the window in the master bath to shade things in there. Need a window blocked from sun? CALL ME!
// posted by MP @ 7:50 AM 
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Oh.My.Goodness. No a/c. I actually went to my neighbor yesterday, with a newborn no less, and told her to get her hiney and her baby over to my house, which has a/c. It was 100 degrees!
I feel your pain. It was 103 here with the heat index the other day, but at least we have blinds, and we don't get the afternoon sun. :) It's so miserable. Fred Meyer has some great fans that sit in your window like a/c units for $29- the brand name is Holmes- they work WONDERS! I highly recommend them!
I don't understand why you don't have a/c in your home...can you not afford to have it installed?
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: 4:59 AM
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