Lick o' paint, lick o' paint, lick o' paint!

Back to the A/C!

At ten o'clock, I duly went to the carpenter and picked up the wooden insert. Apparently the Arabic word for it (which I cannot for the life of me remember) is the same as throat, logical I suppose, as the A/C goes through it, the same as food goes through your throat!

Got it home, and with a little bit of final chiseling here and there it eventually knocked into place. It wasn't far away from being level either! All the hole needed was a slight adjustment along the bottom.

Then came the tidying up of the hole, using white cement which must be past its best, as it goes hard very quickly. I was mixing a small cupful, dropping it onto my homemade mortar board then rushing up the steps and slapping it into the gaps, but by the time (maybe a minute?) I was trying to get another small trowel full; it had gone hard! A bit frustrating to say the least! But perseverance paid off at the end:

Being that the unit was 'pre-owned' I thought that I'd better clean it out before it actually went into place. I borrowed Adam's blower (pronounced 'blOWer' like flower) to blow the accumulation of dust and muck out of the heat exchanger. Now then; I'd already done this with the other one, and knew that the air would be filled with a very fine dust and that I would be breathing it in, even with a mask on! So I improvised with some sticky tape and a plastic bag or two, to block off all the inlet louvres except for enough space to tape the hard floor attachment of my Kirby vacuum to. I'm no tattie (potato) when it comes to inventiveness! My contrived apparatus worked a treat, there was hardly a speck of dust to see.

With shifting the A/C around for the cleaning, it became obvious that I wouldn't be able to lift it into the hole in the wall by myself, maybe a few years ago, but not now! It was 01.30 by now, so I fully expected some of my neighbours to be in Adam's coffeeshop playing dominoes etc., and went downstairs to commandeer one of the younger men. Alas, there were only strangers there, even Adam wasn't around; he'd left his son in charge!

After some more tea and a bit play on the laptop, I gave up and went to bed.

Today, I was up before the crack of noon, and decided to seek the assistance of Mohamed Saba, the scrap man from a few doors down. Here he is, outside his emporium, where he buys and sells scrap metal and paper, and antiques, as well as a wide range of shisha pipes, both large and hand held, oven trays which he makes out of old liquid butter cans and a host of other metal and wooden kitchen utensils which no self respecting Egyptian wife would ever be without!

Click twice on the image, and then look closely at the items he has lying about at the entrance to his 'Aladin's Cave', you'll be amazed at their variety! That's our street's revered senior citizen in the background, Mr Mohamed (strange as it may seem!) he doesn't pray or go to the Mosque, and some of our neighbours tell him that he'll be going straight to hell!

Anyway, I digress (another surprise there then?), I led young Mohamed into our building and up the stairs. He was a willing help, I've got to say, and in one go, he and I just dropped the A/C into the waiting hole, couldn't have been easier!

So, here it is, now we just need a switch and to get Mr Ramadan to wire it up without damaging the paintwork with his spit or bursting through more walls to run the cables:

Lastly, it'll need to have what Mr O'Reilly says at 2 minutes and 27 seconds in the following videeo. (Just click on the link.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvSzSMg4vqU

Enjoy the video, it's only a few minutes long and is a classic!