Adventures in Air Conditioner Removal

Since I would be home several hours before Silver, I received the assignment of “remove our air conditioner before she gets home”. Right away, I knew this was going to be a challenge. For one, said air conditioner is a horrifically old, heavy model that was in the window when we first moved into the apartment two-plus years ago (It’s been in and out a couple times since then, but I had never actually removed it by my lonesome). While I’m not one to refuse free stuff, especially something like that, it’s nonetheless old and clunky, and probably guzzling electricity to boot.

Adding to the challenge is that fact that the window the air conditioner is in is broken–that is, it doesn’t stay up on its own. The reason for this? Said air conditioner is bulky enough that the only way to make it fit in the window is to break the stuff that stops the window from slamming down on the sill.

Knowing this would not be an easy feat, I collected some plastic totes from our bedroom closet to act as an intermediate place for the air conditioner once I had removed it from the window, plus a stepstool to give me an extra bit of height so I wasn’t lifting the air conditioner at such a high point relative to my height. Preparations made, I try to open the window, to find it’s stuck. Completely unlocking the window slowly yielded results, as it slowly opened up more and more, until finally, I had enough room to get to the air conditioner!

…which had already toppled backward out of the window.

Luckily, Silver and I live on the basement floor, and our window is on the side of the building, meaning that the air conditioner fell only a few inches onto soft dirt. Mission accomplished!

Of course, implicit in “remove the air conditioner” was the instruction “Also put it in its proper storage place for the winter”. This was going to be a good deal more difficult. Putting on my socks and sneakers, I walked outside and around the building. After a rather unsuccessful attempt to drag it through the dirt, followed by “flipping” the air conditioner (Think something like the Tire Flip only more laterally, and you’ll have a good idea of what I was attempting) a short distance, I managed to get one corner of it onto my foot somehow. This gave me the leverage I needed to pick it up and carry it to the complex door. After a rest stop, followed by grabbing something to hold the door open, I lift the air conditioner again, this time managing to walk it down a small flight of stairs and to the entrance of our building’s storage room. Dragging the air conditioner the final distance, and probably scratching up the floor while I’m at it, I finally get the unit out of sight and out of mind.

…I really need a better, smaller air conditioner.