What I Found Behind This Water Damaged Wall

When we moved a bad fridge out, I noticed water damage on the wall. I thought the fridge leaked water out and decided to deal with it later. A couple years later, I noticed water damage on the other side of the same wall in the garage.

I figured we had a leak in the roof. But after looking around in the attic, I saw there was no roof leak.

So I tore off some sheet-rock and found some rotten wood.

There's a drain pipe. It looks like the water is coming from above.

The water damage is still higher up.

It's up to the ceiling now. Time to take measurements and find where this is from above.

It's right there under the bed. I peeled off the tile above the drain line. Apparently there really are bad things under the bed.

I can see the pipe through the holes. It's a good thing I measured correctly.

It's hard to see in this picture, but I'm shining my flashlight on a rusty nail that got nailed into the drain pipe.

It started leaking, if not since day one, since the nail rusted.

Here's the pipe after I cut it out. Now the hole is obvious. If I was operating that nail gun, I wouldn't have left it like that.

Fixing the drain pipe was the easy part. But I had to measure carefully and put the pieces together in the correct order. It's a lot easier to move the loose end perpendicularly (left/right, up/down) than longitudinally (along the direction of the length of the pipe).

Here it is after I put the new down pipe section together.

And here's the new top section.

Next, I had to tear out a section of the wall and rebuild it.
I only had to replace two vertical studs. Putting in the new OSB, insulation, sheetrock, and mud wasn't too bad.