If These Walls Could Talk

As part of our kitchen re-do, we replaced the stainless steel backsplash with copper tiles. It's just as sanitary, but a lot nicer to look at. Once the sinks, counters, and cabinets were removed it was easy to pull off the big sheet of stainless and hand it over to a guy with a truck who does recycling.

That exposed the moisture-resistant drywall, and the original bead board behind it. I removed the drywall and carefully pried loose a couple of pieces of the bead board where I needed to get behind them. I numbered each board with a piece of tape so they'd go back into place.

The bead boards are pretty beat-up, and many have round or square holes cut in them for no apparent reason. My guess is that the plumbing has moved around a lot, and the old holes are evidence of old pipes long removed. They're also painted two different colors, and I can't see a lot of logic to where the color changes.

We didn't need to make any substantial plumbing changes, but I did take the opportunity to clean up some old pipe that was in the way.

This shows a section of old galvanized pipe behind the kitchen wall that isn't being used anymore. Presumably, it was the drain from the original kitchen from waaay back. It hasn't been used in decades; it certainly wasn't connected to anything when we bought the house, and it's not wet inside.

It's hard to tell from this photo, but the pipe is wider at the bottom than at the top. From the drain plug down, it's 2" galvanized pipe, but from the drain upwards it's 1-1/2" pipe.

That means it's a "dry vent," a pipe that only carried water downwards, not from anything above it on the upper floors. And since there's no fixture connected to it now, the entire run is empty and abandoned. I'd considered removing it completely... but why? It doesn't hurt anything and it's a nice reminder of how the house used to be plumbed.

What we did do is cut a small section out of the pipe to remove the protruding drain plug. The missing section now has a short run of ABS, with a coupler at one end to adjust for the differing diameters.

And here's some of the new copper backsplash.