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The End of My Journey

  Hello everyone and welcome to my final blog! Although this journey is coming to an end, I had a lot of fun doing it. This project has really taught me a lot about being handy, and given myself a lot more confidence for home projects. I had little experience being handy (helped my dad build a deck) but no experience in building a laundry room.  Since there are many components that go into a laundry room, I got to learn a lot about different trades and how they work together. This became challenging and a bit of game to figure out where everything goes. It was like building and planning out one big puzzle, for you to go and create it later! Out of all the trades, I enjoyed plumbing the most as it was more complex than initially anticipated. I assumed that all I needed to do was ensure the pipes slowed down and had a trap to keep the sewer smell out. I was wrong!!! Learning about venting and how there are a variety of different ways to do it based upon your situation was intriguing (Sta
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Completing all my Rough Ins

 Hello everyone and welcome back! This week has been action packed as I'm preparing to get ready for drywall by next week! I started by completing my rough ins for my washer and dryer! Since all old dryers (Some never use 110v) use 220v outlets I had to relocate the existing one to the dryers new spot. To complete the dryer I also had to create a 4" exhaust to outside for all the lint build up. The washing machine was a little more complex as the plumbing has to be wet vented and connected to my laundry tub. After creating a parts list I soon discovers that the 3" x 3" x 2" ABS wye I needed to start this branch was sold out everywhere!!! Although there was another solution by getting a bigger wye and using a bushing it would increase the cost dramatically. Instead I hooked up my water lines and created a very temporary drain running to the floor drain until I can get the parts to do it properly. Since my plumbing rough in is postponed until next week I decided t
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The Challenges of Framing

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 Hello everyone and welcome back for another eventful week! This week I purchased all the lumber I needed to begin framing my new laundry room! After bring everything downstairs and started, I realized just how unprepared I was!!! The room unfortunetly isn't a perfect square and has many items such as the stairs, furnace supply and dryer exhaust causing me to create many bulk heads. Although it took longer than expected, I managed to frame 90% of my outer wall. Here's how it turned out! As you can see my laundry room is a mess and I had to remove all the old plumbing rough ins so my laundry is now disabled. The  reason I was unable to finish the last few studs is due to the the ceiling. Since I had lots of plumbing and gas piping I planned to straddled the ceiling with 2x4 in order to drop it beneath all the existing work. What I didn't realize is my dishwasher supply was copper and not easily movable. So I will need to purchase a new supply and move more plumbing work to c
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Incorporating the Ontario Building Code

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 Hello everyone and welcome back! This week has been the most challenging one thus far! To ensure my laundry room will be up to building code I had to review the Ontario building code and make some slight revisions to my original plan. One of my first concerns was the venting required for my plumbing rough ins. Since no vent was accessible I have to look for alternative measures. I learned you can use an AAV vent to overcome this problem! Since I will need room for my laundry exhaust I have decided to put my wall 6 inches away from the foundation to ensure I won't have any issues fitting all my HVAC and plumbing.  After assessing all of my neccesary rough ins, it became time to consider how much material I will need to frame. Like many of you reading this blog, I don't like to waste money. When preparing to frame my laundry room I used my template to calculate the perimeter of my room. If you weren't aware, studs have 16" centers, allowing me to approximate how many 2x
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Creating a Plan

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 Hello everyone and welcome back!  This week I decided to create a more comprehensive plan. Although I have some experience with renovations, a laundry room added quite a few extra components that I needed to familiarize myself with. To ensure I wasn't forgetting anything important I decided to research all of my basic requirements. After watching Bunning Warehouses How to Design A Laundry Room - DIY At Bunnings video on youtube, I had a clearing understanding of the preparation needed.  Many of you, like myself might think that the flooring or paint color has to all be planned out ahead of time but it doesn't. To begin building a laundry room you need to create a floor plan of all your appliances, counters and shelving. Although they will be the last thing installed, you will have no idea where to put any of your plumbing, electrical or HVAC needed for the units to work. Not creating a coherent plan will cost yourself a lot of money later on.  Since I like to keep my money, I
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Genius Hour Introduction

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 Hello everyone and welcome to my blog! This blog will be used to showcase my genius hour project for EDBE 8P73 at Brock University. What is genius hour you may ask? Genius hour is a project where students are allowed to spend 20% of their classroom time to explore their own passions. When trying to decide what to do for my genius hour I was stumped. For years my family has neglected our laundry room as none of us had the knowledge to build one from scratch. This left me wondering if I could build my family a laundry room that follows all the code requirements in just 6 weeks if I spent my genius hour time learning to do so. Formulated my genius hour question, "Can I learn how to prepare and build a new laundry room at my house in 6 weeks". The overall goal for my project is to design and construct my family a laundry room that helps make laundry less boring. To complete my goal I will need to research Ontario's building code to ensure all my plumbing, electrical and HVAC
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