Techno thermo.

We've done a bunch of projects to this house already. I hope to eventually catch up and talk about what we're doing that very day/week. But in the meantime...

When we moved in, we had an old, regular thermostat - I would assume it was the one that originally came with the house. It was kind of ugly, it was kind of falling off the wall. It had programs that you could set up, I think, but it was pretty complicated. However, it worked okay. I mean, it turned on the A/C and turned if off when it got to the set temperature.

Honestly,  I didn't think much of it. Until a friend of mine installed Nest. I started doing some research.

Nest is a modern, kind of pricey thermostat. It's wifi enabled so you can run it from your iPhone, even when you're away from the house. You can set it to "away" and it'll lower/raise the temp to save energy. It also learns your habits so eventually, you don't even have to move it to away manually - it does it itself. I was concerned about our cats and the thermostat making it too hot for them, but you set the minimum and maximum temperatures for when you're away. The cats would be perfectly happy snoozing all day at 78 degrees.

At first, I thought the thermostat was too much and unnecessary. But it's the kind of thing that festers in your mind. And you just want it and want it and want it. And then you get a Lowe's coupon and voila - you're installing a new thermostat.

We probably would've never taken on a thermostat installation, but my dad had recently taught us how to change light switches and install dimmers (a later post.) Shoe was riding a wave of confidence. Besides, if you have the right kind of A/C system, Nest is incredibly easy to install. Check out the website: Nest.com

The system comes with labels for the wires and you can watch the videos online... it really felt like the makers thought of every way to simplify the process. The hardest part was getting the old thermostat off the wall - even though it was basically hanging there, it was still un-yank-able. I googled the manufacturer, found the manual and eventually, we figured it out. We had to touch up the paint, since Nest is so much smaller but that was no big deal. We're painting pros at this point.

In short, Nest has been great. It looks great, it works well and we love it. Totally worth the upgrade. And I can't wait to see the power bill.

Before, after and close up. The light on the display only lights up when it senses motion. (The remote on the wall is for our ceiling fan. It's nice to have a remote but I'd love to upgrade that look... hmmm...)