The room box continues to grow in its production value. A little of this, a little of that and now I'm making an air conditioner for the roof top.
The Goods
Where do you think I started? Why of course! The dollar shop (Dollarama to be exact). $3 later and I found my victim...or future air conditioning unit. I either wanted something with fans or louvres. I found the latter in a night light.
The other items I used were:
- Tremclad anodized bronze (flat finish) spray paint
- Tremclad gloss black spray paint
- Tremclad grey primer spray paint
- Testors flat rust paint
- Testors flat brass paint
- Testors flat aluminum paint
- Plastic ribbed tubing from the air pump for an exercise ball
- Plastic packing bits from Miss Kitty's new play kitchen
- Metal washers
- Thumb tacks/push pins
- Finishing pins
- Quick set glue
Break It Down
I unscrewed the nightlight and took the electronic bits out. Then I used pliers and pried off the metal plug prongs. This left me with 3 pieces, the top (with the louvres), the bottom and a plastic plate in the middle (that goes under the louvres).I spray painted them all with grey primer and then used the anodized bronze on the top and bottom pieces and the gloss black on the middle plate.
Below are pictures of the night light.
Build It Up
I reassembled the night light fully painted. The louvres no longer moved because the paint put them in a fixed position, but I had placed them at the angle I wanted before.The night light didn't really come with a convincing "base" that looked like an air conditioner, so I grabbed some scrap wood pieces and built a little box for it to sit on. It too was painted anodized bronze.
Air conditioners have pipes, most often copper pipes, feeding into it. And some Google image sleuthing of industrial air conditioners showed some larger pipes, hence the ribbed plastic tubing I used. The "pipes" were all spray primed. I didn't have copper Testors paint, but I figured brass + rust paint = close enough. They sat on metal washers that I sprayed gloss black and "rusted."
The ribbed plastic tube was painted flat aluminum. But getting it to hold in place with just glue seemed impossible just looking at the tubes bending properties. Solution? Push pins/thumb tacks. I drilled a tiny hole into the air conditioner and into the roof. I cut the pin short on the roof side so it wouldn't go through the ceiling. I filled the ends of the "pipe" with quick set glue and placed them over the thumb tacks.
The wood base has rivets which are actually finishing pins. The labels were the Google result of "industrial warning labels" that I shrunk down in Word. The "Bryant" label actually worked nicely with the lines of the unit.
I then "rusted" everything with paint. But not too rusted.
The Final Product
So there you have it! An air conditioner from a night light. I like it. And I even took pictures of it outside which actually made my photography editing less of a headache!
Cheers!
