Anyone got a little dutch boy?

And I don't mean the paint.

I put a hole in a copper water pipe. What is even worse is that the whole wall behind that same water pipe was exposed so I had no excuse to put a screw through it.

My only rationale is my own vanity. I wanted the screws to look even. EVEN THOUGH the screw I had just put in BARELY missed the pipe the first time I HAD to put the next screw directly parallel to that one. Boy I have a good eye; but boy, my brain shut off.

I was trying to hit the stud but the plumber had notched out an opening in the stud for the pipe to travel through. When my drilling felt weird I went to the back and saw no signs of drill bit so I thought I must have hit the stud and because I couldn't see anything.

When I backed out the screw to make another go...sprishshsplashspray....well, you get the idea. Remembering my first aid (never remove an object embedded in a person...let the hospital kill them,) I screwed the screw back in to stop the flow and shut off the main.

Took Jeff and I almost 2 hours to fix it. We had to melt a weld, cut through the pipe on the other side, put in a new section, re-weld and weld the new section in. Of course the new weld at the cut didn't work because of water in the pipes (I didn't want Jeff to do his bread trick because I didn't think it would make it past the sink supply lines.) The water cooled the weld too much.

I tried to blow the water back up the pipe and it ended up sending about a cup of water back out at me. Luckily I was "smart" enough to have turn off the 220 Volt dryer outlet before we started. We ended up blowing a chunk of bread up the pipe and that seemed to stem the water flow enough to make the weld.

I'm thinking of making a necklace out of my little section of pipe.

Lesson's Learned:

You can't weld pipe with water in it. The bread trick works and it even made it past 3/8ths supply lines (I did remove the faucet screen though.)

You might want to cut a peep hole when installing a vanity or cabinet mirror behind a sink in the basement. There WILL be supply/drainage pipes SOMEWHERE!

Know where your water main shut-off is even if you think you won't need it.