232 Green Street

Winterizing our Home:


We got our second oil bill the other day and were a little freaked out by how high it was. So we decided that we really needed towork on winterizing the parts of the house that were letting the cold air in and the hot air out. Some tasks have been easier that others.

• Adding foam outlet gaskets to the outlets/switches on the exterior walls vastly reduced the draft coming through the walls (see image to left). This is a very cheap and effective way to reduce those annoying drafts from coming through the walls. It's amazing what you can learn from a little searching around the Internet!

• We also took the time, finally, to go around and close all of the storm windows. Unfortunately that wasn't as simple as it sounds considering many of the windows in our house have been painted shut. A little elbow grease, a rubber mallet, and a utility knife did the trick on most of them.

• We had installed a programmable thermostat a while ago and it works wonderfully. The only problem was that the boiler seamed to be kicking on a lot during the day even though we had the temperature set for a constant 65 degrees. We decided to try turning it down to 63 degrees to see if that would help and it has drastically reduced the amount that the boiler kicks on. Saving money where we can is always a good thing!

Our biggest problem, however, didn't start out that way. Removing air conditioners is usually a pretty easy task. That is if the air conditioner was built in the last 20 years! We had a behemoth of an air conditioner in one of of first floor windows circa 1965. It also appears that it had never been removed since it was installed. I can only assume that the last homeowners didn't take it out of the window because it was a huge project - the bolts were all stripped and rusted solid, the windows were jammed making it difficult to unwedge.

This picture shows what can happen to even the correct metal saw blade when dealing with difficult, rusted bolts. Josh made it through all the necessary cuts before the blade finally called it quits.

Once the bolts were cut we faced the challenge on unsticking the window to loosen the decades of paint that held it in place. It took a little coaxing from our trusty rubber mallet and a little wiggling of the air conditioner to finally break it free.

I got to stand in the warmth of the house to "catch" the air conditioner as Josh shoved it through the window. This took a little elbow grease and teamwork because the air conditioner came out in two parts. I've never seen an air conditioner like this before!


Here is Josh giving the air conditioner the heave-ho from the outside. After we removed the brackets that bolted it to the wall.


And here I am once the beast was removed! I definitely can say that this monstrosity will be making its way elsewhere - maybe a landfill or the home renovation sculpture I am planning in all of my spare time...


And here she is. The beast that Josh and I defeated!