Our Dutch guests have brought perfect summer weather with them. Temperatures in the low thirties during the day and a lovely cool high teens at night. Bliss.
In my usual panicky final stages getting the cottage ready (why? I've had six months to do this!) I hummed and hawed about rigging up the free-standing air conditioners in the two bedrooms. I always put them out reluctantly. The hot air extraction pipe needs access to the outside, so I've created a Heath Robinson affair that means I tack a clear plastic "window" with a hole in it into the open frame and the vent pipe pokes through the hole. It works, but it is not beautiful. And the machine itself is clunky and clumsy and clutters the room.
When temperatures at night are in the twenties our guests are just grateful for the relief and are not fussed how the air conditioners look, but the bedrooms are much more attractive without them. Having already too much to do, the prospect of taking time (twice over) wedging the plastic in the frame, finding some tacks and then fighting with the vent pipe to get it to stay in the hole helped in the end sway my decision to tuck the machines back into their corners out the way. I'm glad now I did.
Our guests think the cottage looks lovely - helped, no doubt, by the glorious sunshine but also by the absence of clunky machines in the bedrooms.
