thanks, and a new trick
Wanted to thank you for the great responses to my plumbing issues. We got it all fixed by cutting the pipes near the leaky threaded fittings, resoldering the solder side, then doing the threaded, then soldering a coupling around the cut pipe. So, what we learned by this was a good lesson in order of events. Solder before thread if you can, so you don't melt the teflon when you solder the other side of the fitting. And a good trick for soldering next to dry old studs or lathe - cement backerboard! We first tried "plumber's best friend", which works pretty well, but we found the orange ember glow and black char a bit disconcerting. Takes a lot more to melt cement!! Thanks again. We'll put up pics when we're done. Samantha