As I've said before, venting our dryer is a project that's been on my to-do list since the day we walked through this house with our real estate agent. Thinking the project through, there were two major undertakings that were clearly part of the job: I was going to have to drill and chisel a hole for the dryer vent through the three-brick-thick wall that surrounds our house, and most of the venting ductwork would have to be run through the dark, debris-filled crawlspace that runs beneath our kitchen. Both of these led to a major bout of procrastination on my part, and it wasn't until I was in the crawlspace tracking wires a week or two ago that I learned some good news -- a prior owner had already punched a vent through the brickwork, more or less in the exact spot that I had figured would be the best option. As I lay there on a pile of bricks in the crawlspace, I wondered why I had never seen the vent from the outside before, so I hopped out and went around to the back. That's when the reason became clear: more recently, someone had seen fit to plug the vent with concrete. The whole thing gave me something to think about for a bit, and this weekend, I decided to tackle the project once and for all.

Saturday, I went to our local hardware store and bought a four-pound handheld sledge hammer and a dryer vent attached to a segment of four-inch-diameter rigid aluminum vent. Three strong whacks later, the concrete plug was in pieces on the ground, and it became clear either that I'd have to figure out a way to attach a new vent to the duct that had been plugged, or I'd have to yank that duct out and replace it with the one that I had bought. Being more a demolition man than a nuance man, I went with the latter, and three or four minutes of work with a vise grip later, I had the old duct sitting on the ground next to me. The new duct snugly slid into the spot, and I was off and running... to the hardware store again, to get the remainder of the rigid ductwork I'd need for the run from the dryer to the vent.

Returning with 13 two-foot sections of rigid aluminum vent tubing, four elbow joints, a roll of aluminum tape, and a roll of galvanized steel strapping, I pulled the washer and dryer out from the wall and got to work. Getting the elbow and tubing attached to the dryer turned out to be harder than I thought it'd be, mostly because I wanted to make sure that it stayed securely attached after the dryer was back against the wall. I then needed to cut a hole through the drywall that separates our basement from the crawlspace, and run the duct all the way up to the joists forming the roof of the space. After estimating the right angle that the duct's path would have to take to get to the vent in the wall, I ran and attached everything up against the joists, and then spent about five minutes of trial-and-error before getting the elbows right in the connection between the duct and the vent. I finished everything off by taping all the joints (with the aluminum tape I had forgetfully left back in the basement), and then tested it all out. It was incredibly satisfying to turn on the dryer and feel the rush of air coming out of the vent -- after all the time I spent on my belly and back in the crawlspace, I'm not sure I could have taken it if there had been a problem somewhere!

Jonesing after that effort, I spent another half-hour cleaning all the organic debris out of our crawlspace (including three cardboard boxes, a half-dozen empty soda bottles, a bunch of cut two-by-fours, and an inordinate amount of other bits of wood, sheetrock, and whatnot), and then cleaned up all the dust that I had kicked into the basement. I polished the whole project off by hanging our iron and handheld vacuum on the brick wall next to the washer and dryer, and then took a very long shower. It felt good to get that project done, and it felt even better to see that the basement stayed nice, cool, and dry when Shannon started a few loads of laundry today.

At T-minus seven days until we arrive at the DC home, I've started thinking about some of the more involved projects I need to take care of in the first week or two of our lives there, and the one that I keep returning to is redoing the vent on our dryer. The house has an unfinished walk-up basement, and rather than do the work to vent the dryer through the exterior brick wall, the prior owner just installed flexible vent tubing and an indoor lint trap. This being suboptimal for about 1,000 reasons, I've decided to fix it, and plan to use 4" rigid aluminum to make the run from the dryer to the brick wall that sits at the back of the house. I'm pretty certain that, while more challenging that my average project, this is going to be easily doable; I estimate that the run from the dryer to the wall is about 20 feet and has acceptable bends in it (one 90-degree bend and two 45-degree ones), and I picked up a good, long masonry drill bit and a foot-long stone chisel to help me install the vent hood through the two-brick-wide wall. Most of the articles and tip lists that I've read on the 'net also stress using foil tape to seal all the duct joints and making sure to avoid flexible or semi-rigid tubing as much as possible, so I'll keep all that in mind, as well.

Anyone have any specific tips they want to share? Specifically, I'd love to hear people's experiences with making holes this big through a double-thick brick wall; it seems that that's the part of the job that might be the trickiest.