Meanwhile.
Our A/C went out in our house. The guy comes out and I'm laying in bed recuperating and I start hearing him and his assistant and Roger talking outside my window. Blah blah blah leak blah blah blah difficult access blah blah blah be taking a gamble blah blah blah if it had been installed right...
At this point I get up and wobble outside.
This is sounding expensive, I say.
Ha ha ha, they say.
And, as it turns out...I'm right. I'm SO fucking right. The A/C is kaput. There is no refrigerant left. This means a leak. Since it went kaput so fast, that means it kind of gave out spectacularly... rather than in a pinhole kind of way. We can throw in the equivalent of "fix a flat" and hope it stops it up, along with about 500 bucks worth of refrigerant, but there's no guarantees. We can pay the guy to fix it, but the way it was installed -- under the house, against some ductwork, the controls on the far side of the crawlspace -- makes it super expensive to even start trying.
One alternative is to get some portable units to push around inside the house. Inside our massive 945 square foot house. Moving around in the morning, in and out of the one bathroom, is like a Chinese puzzle, people ducking in and out of doorways to let the person who is in the biggest hurry blow by so that the next most harried person can duck into the bathroom. If we added two rolling A/C units we probably would get stuck in the house and only our arms and legs would wiggle out of the windows, desperately trying to alert the passersby that we have a problem here.
Not a good alternative.
Or, we can rebuild the entire attic and put it up there. Do some rat abatement, some carpentry, add an attic fan, throw in some insulation, put in a whole new unit. Boy, that sounds great, doesn't it? And has a price tag that's pretty staggering attached to it.
We haven't figured out what we're doing yet. We're getting more second opinions about this than we did with my surgery. That seems relatively straightforward suddenly. Cut, tuck, nuke, poison, augment, done. This... gets soooo complex.
And when I say expensive, I'm meaning expensive. Like up there in the $15-20K range expensive. Not sure about you, but I don't have that kind of change hanging out under the sofa cushions. And yet, on the other hand: it's air conditioning. People kill for less when it's really hot out there. Tempers rage. Divorces happen. And, like, I'll need that going on while I'm dealing with chemo? Can we cut ourselves a little bit of a break here? Can I start a kickstarter campaign for my LIFE?
So, I'm thinking, OK then. Let's all calm down. Maybe we can refi something, squeeze some more money out of this poor little house. And while we're at it, we should add in some other desperately needed improvements, low ticket items, like the kitchen and bathroom. And while we're at that, we should actually investigate whether we actually could ever expand. Maybe build a new little house in back. And while we're at that... it's mind boggling. Down the rabbit hole.
But first things first. We need the A/C. As my son (a huge GoT fan) intones: Summer is coming.
It's all surgery these days. Gutting things, straightening things, removing things, expanding things. What is going on? Where will we all be when this time of upheaval and rebuilding is done? Cooler air, fewer rats in the attic...figuratively and literally. We can only hold on tight and wait for this to settle down.
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