Monday, June 29, 2015

0 DIY Outdoor Sink for the Garden

When searching for a faucet and sink for the Master Bath renovation, I found the perfect faucet on a boring sink, and a great sink with a boring faucet. Pitsch Salvage doesn't let you split the items or swap things, so I had to buy both. After some serious work, I was able to swap the faucets, threw away the bad one (destroyed by corrosion and my attempts to remove it), and ended up with an extra sink.


Becky had suggested we use it for a bird bath, or maybe an outdoor wash station for the garden. I thought long and hard about how I could pull off the sink idea. Her birthday was last week, so it was the perfect time to complete the project.

I started with the base. I had a bunch of leftover treated 2x6 pieces from the deck project, and thought they'd work perfectly as a cube base.  I started by using my Kreg Jig to attach two boards together with pocket hole screws. 


Then I attached one side, then the other side, with pocket hole screws again.


For the bottom, I just used outdoor screws faced in. It's probably not as strong a hold as the pocket holes, but easier, and with how many screws are holding this thing together, it'll be fine.


The days following were so busy, I wasn't able to complete the project before Becky's birthday, and the day after I had to scramble to complete it so I didn't feel so bad about missing out. As a result, photos were not taken, unfortunately, but I'll walk you through it anyway - it was super easy.

The thing I was having trouble with the most was what the top would look like. Originally, I just thought the sink would sit on top of the two cubes, but I just couldn't come up with a solution of how the sink would actually stay put, since it was bigger than the actual base. Then it clicked. I had grabbed a pallet from one of the Home & Garden Shows that had no space between the slats, and was going to use it as some sort of wall hanging, but this was the perfect scenario for it. I also had a leftover treated 4x4 post that I could sink in the ground as an anchor, and decided to pick up some paver stones for the base to sit on. 

I measured the bowl of the sink, drew a rough sketch on the pallet, drilled a pilot hole and then took my jigsaw around the rough drawing. A few drop-the-sink-in-and-cut-some-more and I had it.

Next I put the pavers down (just regular concrete pavers from the big box, $1.68 apiece or something like that), put the cube base down, put the pallet on top and measured where the post should go.  I dug the post hole, putting it all back together to see how level I was each time, and finally got it to the right depth. I filled the hole around the post back in with dirt - I saw no reason to sink it with cement. 

Because it's not a treated pallet, I used a spray polyurethane on the top, just a couple of coats. I figure if we see serious wear I'll step up and do something a little more heavy duty.

I dropped the sink in, caulked around it, and added the faucet, which was our old kitchen faucet, semi-ruined by calcium deposits before our softener was installed, but still operational for this application.


For the hose hookup, because the spigot is on the house, about 20 feet away and across the yard, every time we have to mow we have to wind the hose back up, being careful not to break the spray nozzle end. I thought instead it would be nice to use a quick release attached to a hose already on the base. So I bought a quick release attachment (so there's no screwing the thing on every time), a coiled hose with a rack, a 3-way connector (to split the feed to both the hose and the faucet), and some adapters to hook the faucet up with.


The only criticism is that the coil hose is sort of annoying when going around the garden, since it can catch on the plants, so I might scrap that and get just a regular hose. But other than that, it works great and Becky loves it!
 

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