If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that I’ve completed a few little projects around the house during our time at home, all of which I’m still very happy with by the way! The dining room wall still looks amazing and the linen closet (although obviously not as organized), still makes me smile.

But I’ve had another area of our home that’s been bothering me from the beginning…our AC unit that sits right in front of our front porch. If you look back through my BLOGS, you’ll see that our porch was another one of those areas that we did a complete transformation on. Living in Bloor West Village, on our street in particular, front porch living is a must! We have AMAZING neighbours that we visit with regularly; so although we now have this great space to take advantage of, looking at it from the street, still wasn’t all that appealing.

So I called my dad…retired and always in need of a project…and I got planning. Here’s a look at the pre…

Pinterest

As usual, my first stop was Pinterest. This was a great place for me to check out various ideas.

Essentially I knew what I wanted but I needed to nail down the design. I knew that there had to be air flowing around the unit, so it couldn’t be a solid structure; and I knew I wanted there to be a little interest with varying sized panels. So flipping through the links, I came across a couple that I liked and sent these off to my dad. 

Making a plan…

Once I had that idea, I started mapping it out in my mind. Like the dining room wall, the first thing I did was take a photo and mock it up. Sent that one off to my dad too.

Now before you start thinking I spent $000’s of dollars on this project (given the cost of lumber these days), this was pretty much free! My dad had a ton of scrap 2x6s laying around, so that’s where we got the majority of our material.

I gave him the dimensions of the panels that I wanted and he got cutting. 

Let’s Do This…

So the sketch was made, majority of pieces were cut, now it was time to assemble.

We double checked the measurements, trimmed what we needed to trim and started putting the frame together. In the initial photo you’ll see the electrical box to the left of the unit. We wanted to be sure we were able to hide that so we went a little wider with the frame to incorporate that in. This means the unit isn’t quite centred but I was ok with that. Again, we need air to be able to circulate around the unit so this provided some additional space for that to happen.

Once the frame was complete, we began adding the panels. A larger 4″ panel followed by 2×2″ panels, using the same spacer  (scrap end) to measure in between. We followed this pattern on each side. When that was finished, we realized it still looked a bit incomplete at the top and corners. I went into the garage, found a few more strips of random wood, and used that to frame it out.

This took us a day. Then it was time to paint. I had leftover paint from our porch flooring. I wanted the unit to blend in as much as possible, so I chose that colour vs. the railing shade.

A few hours later…and this project was done!

Recycled wood. Existing paint. And one more COVID project tackled. Although this one didn’t make a huge difference from our view point from sitting on the porch, it definitely makes a difference when looking from the street! 

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