Have discovered that our kitchen sink drain appears to be leaking inside the
wall behind the cabinets, and am wondering if I can repair this myself.
Have emptied the space below the sink and cut away a portion of the back
panel to reveal a moldy expanse of sheetrock centering around the passage of
the drain. Can anyone give me an idea as to what might lie behind the
sheetrock, and what I might do about it. We have an appt with a plumber,
but I am sufficiently OCD that leaving this thing alone until he gets here
sometime tomorrow is driving me crazy. Am I a total fool, or is this
something I might reasonably be expeced to be able to fix on my own if I
were to break through the sheetrock? Have to say I was born to fix one
thing or another, and am the one all the family calls on whenever anything
fails to work properly (from computers to kitchen sinks and toilets, as well
as electrical wiring.) The only reason I hesitate is because the wife will
bitch to high heaven about me working in a moldy environment without some
kind of respirator. She knows someone who almost died after raking up some
moldy leaves and breathing the resultant particulates, and lives to tell me
I am doing it wrong or not being carefull enough. I can get a respirator
from the local ACE Hardware or Home Depot, but it looks like the mold
extends along the floor inside the wall to the extent of the kitchen
counter, and I might have to tear all that out to rectify this situation.
It is my understanding that common household bleach in a fairly weak
solution kills mold, but I hesitate to tear half the kitchen apart. Still,
the cost of doing so looks a lot more attractive than the cost of hiring
someone to do it for me (which is how this happened in the first place. We
had the house remodeled about four years ago, and I suspect the contractor
left this half-done just like he left half the other stuff half-done.)
Thanks for any replies. I am looking for input, good, bad or indifferent.

Dave