Right in the middle of our spare room remodel we suffered a forced remodel in the bathroom. One evening I shut off the water as I was finishing washing my hands and a trickle could still be heard…then the leak frog went off. I ran my hands around the pipe — that’s not a metaphor — and it seemed clear the water was only coming from the very bottom of the J trap. I removed it and (as you can see in the pictures) could see right through the corroded pipe. You think this story’s over, but it’s ready to begin.

There were at least a dozen trips to some version of a hardware store over the next week. I’ll summarize the issues which all generally stem from trying to do plumbing repair on a 50+ year old house: the modern J trap pipe is an inch shorter than the one I replaced, the sink was mounted to the wall with an iron bracket that was covered in 50 years of rust, the screws holding on the bracket were set in wet concrete (50 years ago) and even the As-Seen-On-TV screw extractor couldn’t remove them, so I had to cut the bracket off the wall going through three standard cut-off blades on my rotary tool before I found the heavy duty metal cutting blade (which was still reduced by at least 1/3rd when I was done), and even then I had to use a vise-grip and a lever to get the screws out, the drain on the modern sink I put in (final pictures coming soon) was 6 inches taller than the old one so I had to get an extension, the fittings on the water supply pipes are an obscure 50 year old iron pipe size that required adapters…that didn’t come with washers requiring another trip. …I’m losing my temper just dredging it all up again.

It was a nightmare project, but it’s almost done. I just need a better set of washers — the ones I installed restrict the flow too much — and to seal the sink to the wall. Big thanks to Becky for putting up with the mess and cleaning up occasionally.

Sidebar: The leak frogs were purchased on woot , of course, and not for the reasons most people purchase them. Our dog “springs a leak” on the (thank goodness it’s tile) bathroom floors and I was hoping to use these as a deterrent.

Thought this was interesting, particularly in light of recent conversations.