Fixing the Pop up stopper

Time it should take: 20 minutes
Time it took me: 30 minutes


I don't know how he did it, but he broke the pop-up stopper in the bathroom sink. Okay, there's just a little cheapy plastic piece that holds it in, and Mr. Brute strength thinks he can make anything work so he pulled the darn thing out... manually.


After consulting my trusty "Plumbing 101" book, I set off to work. This job requires some prep before you can actually do it. Gather a bunch of rags, old toothbrush, 2 buckets, and the tool box. A flashlight might be helpful too. Clean out the area under the sink, yes, maybe even vacuum the cockaroach poop outta there. You might have to squeeze underneath the sink in order to see what you're doing.


Off to Home Depot I go again, and I discovered something new... Pop up stoppers DON'T come in blue. There's a little blue plastic protective covering over the stopper to keep it from getting scratched while you install it. DUH! (No, I'm a brunette.) I also discovered that you can take those pieces out of the package without breaking it open. The packaging is made in such a way that you can open it up, compare the piece with your original, and easily put it back together. Oh my... the world of home repairs... even us home repair DIY dodos can figure things out.

The stopper I bought looks somewhat different from the original one, but it seems they all work the same way. Here's my original stopper, without the broken off bottom part:

There was a small plastic shaft that had a hole on the bottom. It was way too gross for pictures. I dumped it with the rest of the slime.

Here's a picture of what you'll find at the store. I just matched the size of the stopper part assuming "Universal" meant it would fit nearly any sink drain. This one has the blue plastic covering removed.

There's a whole lot of info on fixing the stopper on the net, and Lowes.com has a good diagram of how it all works. So I won't go into the details on how to fix it. Here are just a few thoughts and ideas to keep in mind. It is a gross job and you may want to wear rubber gloves. First, make sure the bucket fits under the drain when you remove the trap. You definitely don't want it to slip. What'll come out is incredibly uh... for lack of a better word, disgustingly gross...and it stinks. Be ready for a trail of hair and more slime to come slopping out of the pipe when you pull it open. Dump the rubbish into the bucket and clean out the drain with baking soda. It'll deodorize it and get rid of some of that stink.

And yes, I said you'd need two buckets. The other one is use to hold the parts and clean them in after you remove them. You won't want to put it down anywhere on your sink. Clean the parts and reinstall the new stopper. Now you've got two buckets of toxic waste... where to dump them? Okay... that's a good question. I used the toothbrush to pull the hair/slimeball out of the trap/drain and other parts, let it drip into the bucket a bit then just threw it into the trash. After scrubbing the drain with the toothbrush, I rinsed it out and had a bucketfull of stinky grey slimewater. That went down the toilet. I figured there was nothing solid that should block it and it's no worse than anything else we flush.

So Voila! A clean sink (with new pop-up stopper), and now I don't need to worry about having to fish DH's lost little things out of the drain anymore. Good job MOM!

Total Savings: $60.00