How-to: Cover An Unsightly Something or Another

The apartment that we call home has lots of...quirks. Perhaps the quirkiest of these quirks is our air-conditioner opening built so thoughtfully right into our bedroom wall. Great idea, bad execution. Other than the fact that we don't even use an air conditioner, there are three main problems with this:



1) The opening is HUGE, like...they don't even make a\c's that big anymore- huge.
2) It's covered by a thin piece of styrofoam, which is bad at blocking out both noise and cold (it faces a pretty busy street on the first floor).
3) It's ugly and prevents us from hanging anything to pretty up the wall space. Oh and our cats managed to use the styrofoam for a scratching post the one time we removed it from the opening.

So..after much deliberation, we decided that the easiest/cheapest/most cohesive thing to do it just cover it up.

We started by weatherstripping around the opening to prevent any heat from getting out, since it opens up directly to the outside.

We found a 40" dowel at Jo-Ann Fabrics for $1.99. A coat of white paint and we were in business. Mike got the brilliant idea to use eye-hooks to hang it instead of shelling out for curtain brackets. Cha-ching!

So we just lined up the eye hooks at the end of the dowel with some eye hooks that we screwed into the wall.  We then attached them with some picture wire (which we had hanging around) and hung a panel of fabric (we used an extra curtain that we had stashed away). Voila- right? Wrong!

 

You could see the darn air conditioner box right through our curtain panel. Luckily, we had a second option- a blackout shade that we bought a while ago that ended up being too small for the window. Much better!

Oh, and someone made very good use of the discarded curtain panel- in case you were wondering!