Now for the indoor units. One complication is the bedrooms have windows occupying much of the exterior walls, so I can’t put the indoor units there, and the rest of the bedroom walls have picture molding right where the indoor unit needs to be, and I don’t want to cut away molding that’s been there since 1911, as dumb as that sounds.
In two rooms, I’ll have to put the indoor unit on an interior wall, then run the lines through the closet to reach the exterior wall. Example here is the master bedroom. The indoor unit will go over that armoire thingy, the lines will go into closet then turn and run to the exterior.
Another example is the spare bedroom. Indoor unit above the dresser thingy, lines will run through a short surface chase into closet then to exterior.
The two other bedrooms can accommodate the indoor units directly on an exterior wall.
For the picture molding issue, I think I’ll use about 2” thick scrap wood to space the mounting plate out from the wall to clear the picture molding. The mounting holes are spaced just right. The pragmatic reason I don’t want to cut off the original picture molding is that in this neighborhood, people are looking for old houses that are nicely original and unmuddled. Also, I’m a little concerned the indoor units hanging on the wall will be ugly. If that’s the case then maybe someday I’ll replace them with the kind that sit in the ceiling. I’m too lazy to do that now, though. I spent the entire spring-fall 2023 working on the house, then summer-fall 2024, I want to have a break in 2025 which means keeping this minisplit project as simple as reasonable. It already seems more complicated than the Youtube videos . . . which are always on the ground floor and usually in garages.
Simple . . . and cheap(ish). The next project is going to be converting the finished attic with two low dormers into a third floor master suite with bathroom and standing height dormers. Even with as much DIY as I’m capable of, that’s not gonna be simple or cheap. But we’ll then go from a 4 bd 1.5 ba to a 5 bd 2.5 ba which is a lot better. And I can convert the master bedroom into a really good home office, and have the option of giving up my current rented office should that be sensible.