D.I.Y. - and unintended consequences. (Or "leave well alone).

The cooler morning temperature today led me to use a bit of necessary spackle near the threshold of my house's  Lanai.  The vinyl spackle which I used has set well. In a day or two I will paint over it.

Emboldened by this D.I.Y. success I decided to tackle another project. 

I have twin kitchen sinks, neither of which has been draining very well. I figured that there might be blockages in their “U” pipes. 

It was easy enough to unscrew the collars on the plastic pipes, and yes indeed, I found a lot of gunk at the base of the U’s, which I was able to clean out. 

I thought “so far so good”.

Then I decided to clean out the outlet pipe which leads from the two U’s into the sewer.  I discovered that this pipe was filled with greasy and gooey "gunk"  -  far more than I could extract.  ‘Twas time for a plumber! 

The plumber arrived in less than an hour after my ‘phone call, (read that again and believe it!).   

He “machined” the outlet pipe and pulled out a ton of the greasy/gooey mess.

I thought “so far so good”.  

The pipe goes through a wall into the laundry room, where it is linked with the drain pipe from the washing machine. 

There is a nice bit of copper pipe just before this link.  It was a bit corroded.

 After the machining/reaming out of the "gunk", this copper pipe started to leak out very many pints of waste water, through a hole of about ¾” in diameter.  

That hole had been effectively sealed by the greasy/gooey “gunk”.  Once that "gunk" was removed, the corroded copper pipe “let loose” (so to speak)!

The good plumber replaced that bit of corroded pipe.  I handed over a check/cheque for $ 311.

My question for you is: “would I have saved that $311 had I not started the day in a D.I.Y/ mood?”