People tend to forgive their air conditioning units for being hideous monstrosities in their walls during the heat of the summer.
But the appliance's unsightliness really stands out come winter, when we turn them all off and they just sit there in our walls, looking gross.
When faced with this conundrum in a bedroom of her Los Angeles home, a frustrated interior designer named Justina Blakeney asked her 130,000 followers on Instagram, "What's a girl to do!?!??"
As blogger of The Jungalow and author of "The New Bohemians: Cool And Collected Homes," Blakeney acknowledges you might think she should have all the answers, but "I was just coming up blank, staring at this A/C and just wanting to take it out," she told HuffPost.
But because Los Angeles was going through a heat wave, taking the unit out wasn't an option, and because Blakeney and her husband recently remodeled their kitchen, "we were just on pause for any other remodels."
So she posed the question to her followers, and the advice poured in -- 117 comments' worth. Some suggested covering the unit with a painting or a decorative box, or maybe putting a frame around it.
"I liked the idea of using fabric and putting a curtain on it that you could push over," she told HuffPost, but Blakeney didn't have a curtain. "I had a huge canvas, and because I got it for like 20 bucks at Goodwill, I didn’t mind cutiting around it so that it could fit behind the bed.
She used the unit itself as a shelf for plants ("because plants are my vibe") and installed a gold wall sconce on top of the headboard "to add an extra layer of looking more finished and move the eyes to the center of the bed, as opposed to that A/C unit."
Blakeney said social media was a huge help and source of inspiration. "I think that there is power in numbers and I love to hear what other people's ideas are. Some of the people who chimed in are designers I really respect, and getting feedback from other experts or other people who dealt with similar problems is just a fun way to do it."
As for the bedroom, it's a temporary fix, "but it looks pretty and gives me a happy feeling, which is what I needed," she said.
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