It’s been awhile between posts on this blog since I’ve been busy getting the lake house in gear, and was also out of the country in London and Paris for several weeks. One of the first projects I tackled this summer was setting up air conditioning in the lake house. The house does a pretty good job of staying cool without air conditioning because of all the tree cover, but for particularly hot days having air conditioning on the top floor is definitely necessary. The house is not ducted for central air, and is not really big enough to require it, so I purchased a large LG portable air conditioning unit.
All of the windows in the lake house are casement style windows, so installing a through-the-window unit wouldn’t work. The portable unit still needs to be vented outside, however, and couldn’t go through the window for the same reason that the through-the-window unit wouldn’t work. With that in mind, I simply cut a hole through the drywall and used a sledge hammer to break a hole through the brick.
I ran the exhaust tube through the hole, and plugged the empty space with great stuff:
After the great stuff set, I cut and installed trim around the interior hole. The trim matches the rest of the stained oak trim in the house, and combined with the well-designed AC unit itself, is anything but an eyesore.
On the outside of the house, I repaired the brick damage using concrete filler, and installed a vent cover:
The air conditioner does an excellent job of quietly cooling the top floor of the house when required, and was an easy install that I completed in a single weekend.
Hardin Home: Home Improvement Projects at a Country Home in Verona, WI 