The Old Man and the Street

No pleasure, no rapture, no exquisite sin greater… than central air.

–Azrael, Dogma

Despite the evident Biblical repercussions, M. and I have decided to get central air conditioning installed in The Old Man. After a ton of research and 4 separate quotes, we’ve decided on a vendor to install a Space Pak high velocity system. We never really considered a conventional duct system, so it came down to Space Pak or Unico system, and our chosen vendor does both, but recommended Space Pak.

Quite frankly, even after doing tons of research and asking a bunch of people which they preferred, the jury’s out on which one is better. Our nephew, S., who does HVAC for a living claims that the differences are mostly in the marketing materials. On top of that, we have several friends who have Space Pak, and they love it, so it’s obviously not a *bad* system. As long as it cools the house without sounding like a 747 is landing, I’ll consider it a success. Whatever the case, if all goes well, by the end of June, we’ll have air conditioning installed.

Wow, what a month. I’ve been completely swamped and have hardly spent any time working on The Old Man.

The week before last, M. and I spent some time out in the yard: I turned over most of the garden on the South side of the yard (which is nothing but a 90 foot strip of dirt) while M. weeded the yard. We’re basically struggling to make sure the lawn doesn’t die from neglect while the rest of our neighbors seem to be competing for the cover of Home and Garden magazine. This weekend we’re hoping to pull up some sod in the back corner of the yard and get some semblance of a vegetable garden started, but that might be a little ambitious for two people with as little free time as the two of us.

The attic is coming along nicely. Last weekend M. and I managed to get the rest of the panelling and framing ripped out (and thrown out of the rear attic window). So now our attic is mostly empty except for a few hundred pounds of dust and dirt, so this weekend it’s back up there with the Shop Vac. And the Advil. Another few hours of work and we should have a relatively clean attic ready for the air conditioning installers to do their magic.