apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Decoupage?

Just teasing. Because I'm kind of lazy, I'd mount the curtain rod further from the wall, and hide the machine 'n hoses behind the curtain when not in use.

i like rhiana's idea very much! makes sense.

Time to make a robot methinks...
http://blog.makezine.com/269073559_ccfccd26bb_o.jpg

geez, that's a bad combo casement/exhaust kit. a bigger pic would be nice to see, but perhaps use a Trofast storage thingy from ikea http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/S99847410 to run it through. just cut the requisite holes for the tube. then you'll have a little storage, and a hidden exhaust.

hrm... yeah, i guess i'd find some long arms for the curtain rod and hide it all behind there...

Buy or make a folding screen, such as the ones at http://furniture.about.com/od/storageshelving/ss/foldingscreens_8.htm

Egads. Maybe put it on (or under) a table, and/or use a screen to shield it from view? Could you paint the a/c unit something that wouldn't stand out so much from the red and gold?

I have a weird solution - and I'm not even sure it would make the situation any better, but it might...
buy a curtain panel like the ones in the picture and make covers for the hoses like those fabric tubes they sell for chandelier cords.

If that's too strange I'd buy a screen.

Buy a vintage movie poster of Forbidden Planet to prop next to it. It'll look intentional, since your unit looks exactly like Robbie the Robot.

There is no way to hide it. I have a similar portable unit, and quickly discovered that any attempt at trying to hide the hoses or the unit only made the thing more obvious.

Learn to live with it, and silently curse your HOA. Or curse them loudly, chances are they won't be able to hear you over your a/c's exhaust.

Yikes, two hoses! I have a portable AC too (because I have the typical New York over the window bars) and hide what I can of the hose by having it run behind my headboard. It's hard to hide the unit itself though.

Using a short screen as other commenters have suggested seems like a good idea. If you put the unit against the wall, use a short three paneled screen, and put a nicely finished piece of wood on top, you could even disguise it as an accent table when not in use.

Yup, I thought of what blackbird suggested.

Here's a site that shows what it looks like on cords and chains:
http://www.designercords.com/pages/chandeliercover.php

If those lovely drapes didn't cost an arm and a leg, and you can still get them, you could have a similar thing made out of the identical fabric for the hoses.

By the way, how well does that unit work? Is it effective? What is it's cost to purchase and to operate?

This may not be feasible, but perhaps some sort of tall cabinet that the unit would fit in. The top could be a shallow shelf (about the depth of a CD or paperback) which the hoses run behind and the bottom could be a pegboard or some other well-vented area but masked front piece which allows air to easily flow, but completely hides the unit.

It'd probably have to be custom-built or a modified pre-built unit. Just a thought.

TrueBlue - You really don't want to know...It was $600. OUCH. But my only other option would have been to get a building permit, have a contractor mount a through-the-wall-unit, hire an electrician to run a dedicated 230V circuit to the breaker box, then do a lot of drywall patching, and repainting.

Roughly 4X the cost. So I'm putting up with the ugliness till I can justify the cost of something better.

As to how well it works - I don't know yet. It's reasonably quiet, and it has an oscillating function. Unfortunately it's not energy star. I wanted energy star but I was lucky to even find this one locally. Things like this I prefer to buy locally in case of problems.

We're still practically in Winter here. We have a day or two of Spring then we go back to Winter. OK, not quite Winter...it was 56 today. We haven't seen the sun for more than 2 days in a row in a very long time. Come to think of it, February had *much* nicer weather than we've had in weeks. But hey if summer ever does come I'll be ready. Hopefully.

Oh, the drapes were dirt cheap - Bed Bath & Beyond.

I have the same problem. Our house has no central air and our attic isn't large enough for us to have ducts going through. We will be *forced* to do forced air from the crawl space under the house. This will cost more. In the meantime, we have 3 of those portable air conditioners (thank goodness we got them all for free from sympathetic family members!) taking up space and creating ugliness in these rooms.

The more we try to hide them, the sillier it looks. It is what it is -- and it will make us appreciate our forced air conditioner even more when we do it.

Another idea might be to make a "curtain pillar".

Take any ~ 12" diameter disk (like the seat off an old wooden stool, say) and staple a ~18" wide, floor to ceiling curtain to the top surface around the perimeter of the disk, then attach this disk to your ceiling so that the staples and disk edge are hidden by the curtain.

This curtain should now hang like a narrow column or pillar.
Position it right above the hoses so that the hoses are hidden within the curtain column, with the opening between curtain ends at the back towards the window for the hoses to exit.

As an option, you could put one on the opposite side for symmetry. It might look better if you suspended the disk from the ceiling so that the top of the curtain column was at the same height as your window curtains.

Maybe not the best idea but it just popped into my head...

these can actually be decent units if used properly -- much better, perhaps, than a fixed wall unit as you can move them completely out of sight when out of season. however, the dual hose is a bit of a problem -- i'd have not gone that route (the sharp CVP12LX is one of the quietest and a single hose). 1400BTU is overkill for a bedroom anyway (unless you live in an un-airconditioned palace).

we'll likely run a similar single-hose set-up and vent it through the wall "dryer style" and when not in use, cover the 5in hole with a custom plate (think: hooking a hose to a shop-vac when picturing the attachment)... much better in the winter than looking at an AC. while this doesn't immediately help, perhaps something to think about during the next heat wave when everyone is looking for ACs on craigslist (i.e.: you might consider the above single-hose idea and hold your dual-hose for resale at a later date.)...

sorry no idea for the immediate problem.

my neighbor gave me something like this but it's only an air conditioner, it's brand new. If it gets really hot in your place, the hose gets hot too. My previous landlady had one of these and the window panel didn't fit in her window...so she ended up duct taping it in place, and that tube got so hot it melted the adhesive of the duct tape... I'd probably just leave it and be happy your house is cool. I dunno maybe yours is better because of the 2 tubes and may not have this problem...

edit: 1400BTU is overkill for a bedroom anyway (unless you live in an un-airconditioned palace).

should read: 14000BTU... the sharp i mentioned is 11.5K. they sell it at fry's and i think i saw a black model at home depot, oddly enough (both in concord).

we have a 12KBTU mini-split head cooling a 15X20X10 room with no problems. for the average sized bedroom, 8K should be plenty (we have 7K cooling a bedroom and part of a hallway...)... and in the deep east bay, it gets toasty.

best of luck.

You should put one of those horrible scrunchy chandelier chain cozys that crappy shabby chic designers use to disguise electrical cording and make it a critical comment on taste.

Ooohh, ooohhh, I know! Just take your decorating cue from the movie Brazil, no one will notice!

guild them in gold.

Yeah I know 14K is overkill - one of my criteria was dual hoses (supposed to be more efficient) and this was the only dual hose model I could find...

Oh well, thanks for all the suggestions.

One of my neighbors suggested putting tall silk plants near it...

By the way, the condo is a townhouse style except that the upper bedroom is a loft. No door, and open to the rest of the space (even has a balcony overlooking the living room).

The original design has PTAC heat-pumps for heating and cooling (those are those hotel-style units). Some times I think about tearing the ceiling up for venting but even then there's no good way to do it and the estimate I got for it was over $8K...so this has to do unless the market *seriously* heats up here.

The ceilings are 25' high in places so as the place heats up, all the hot air finds its way into the loft bedroom. That's one reason I went with a bigger unit.