Category Archives: Home Improvement

Installing a garage sink

My wife wasn’t happy with my bad habit of washing my dirty oil covered hands in the kitchen sink. I’m quite bad at cleaning up after myself, even when I’m cleaning up after myself.

I was lucky enough to my my washing machine right next to the garage. I cut some drywall out to expose the hot, cold, and drainage line. I tapped into all of these for the sink.

In this picture the garage is too the left about one stud bay away, I am sitting where the washing machine normally does.

I opted for sharkbite fittings because my brazing skills suck and I would most certainly light the drywall and studs on fire trying to get tees installed. I had to bend the pex around the back of the drainage line, thankfully I didn’t braze them and could simply rotate the connector a bit to accommodate the bend in the pex.

Tees installed, Pex running through the stud bays before going out to the garage

If you can’t tell, there is a massive dryer lint / cobweb infestation in the crawl space under the washing machine. The previous owner never noticed the dryer exhaust ductwork had come undone, the dryer was pumping moist warm air into the crawl space.. Everything around there was covered in lint and spider webs! I teed into this drainage line and ran the pipe out to the garage as well.

It’s like a haunted house under here!

Here both of the water lines are running through the wall and have their braided hoses ready to attach to the sink. The drainage lines has been run into the crawlspace to connect to the washing machine drain.

After a few trips to Menards to get the required hardware I decided to get a flexible fitting for the drainage and water connections in case I need to move the sink in the future. Here you can see the drainage line very close to the floor running through into the crawlspace.

After the installation was complete I replaced the removed drywall, then taped and mudded it!

Now to clean all this mess up!

New Gas Fireplace

The unused, unlit, unloved wood burning fireplace in our house needed some attention. I started by teeing off of the line I previous installed to run the garage heater.

Unfortunately the pipe had to be moved away from the wall to account for this, but now the main house gas line couldn’t reach the tee! I ended up wrapping around the pipe and using a union to get it connected.

I ran the gas line through into the crawlspace along the joists to the fireplace. I added some temporary support while drilling the hole in the subfloor for the gas valve key. Once it was lined up and drilled I affixed the gas pipe to the joist for a secure connection. After going through the key valve I ran the gas line outside and along the side of the chimney, supported with Unistrut channel and brackets along the way.

I used a rotary hammer and a long bit to drill through the brick to the outside of the house. I ran the gas line in through the hole from outside.

I originally underestimated how thick the fireplace was!

Had to go back to the store for a larger bit

Since the fireplace has a working chimney with flue I decided to use a normal gas fireplace instead of an insert or something that doesn’t require an actual chimney. Flexible gas line connected to the fireplace, all that was left was wood!

In the video you can still see the gas line, afterwards I purchased 15lbs of lava rock and poured it around the outside of the fireplace to hide the grate and the gas line.