Toilet: 2: Rebecca: 1

Soooo, the toilet has had a very minor drip thing going on. It would run a little at odd times. No problem till we got our first water bill. Oh yes, now it matters! I thought perhaps it was a do-it-yourself project and inlisted my Dad's help. I went out and bought a new flapper valve and felt impressed with myself.


2 weeks later, my new flapper valve is still in the wrapper. Callie tries to flush the toilet and the handle broke. Actually, the plastic part directly on the other side of the handle sheared right off. Thus, flushing by handle became an impossibility.


Joshua and I headed to Lowe's for a Mommy/Son date. I felt quite important as I picked out a shiny new handle. Actually, I let Joshua pick it out. I thought perhaps I should replace pump thing as well, since it was pretty old. So I selected a new one, and we brought our prizes home.

Here is the back of my toilet. I know, you are thoroughly impressed. This was taken BEFORE that plastic bar broke. I needed this to help choose my flapper valve 2 weeks ago. This is just so you know what I started with. I am now prepared and motivated and I get to work.


That means I called my Dad to walk me through it. He says to turn off the water at the base. I turn and turn and turn till it won't go any more. There is still water trickling out of the thing; this is not good. No worries, I'll deal with it later! I wow myself by removing the old flapper valve and replacing it with my beautiful new one.

Check it out. (I had to get orange/red because they didn't offer blue.) Motivated by my success in this endevour, I move on to the broken handle issue. Oops. To my dismay the handle is so not going to work. It is for a SIDE mounted toilet and this one clearly is not side mounted. It is a funky not-quite-side-not-quite-front mounted kind. Ug. I am disgusted. I will have to go back tomorrow and see if I can get the correct part. In the mean time I gear myself to tackle this:

Yes, this ugly, rusty thing must go, and I am ready to do it. I prepare my bucket and with herculean effort I unscrew the nut at the bottom of the toilet. Since the wall valve would not shut off all the way, there is a continuous stream of water flowing into my bucket. I feel the pressure; I'm on a time line to get this done before the bucket fills.

No problem, I am a Marine wife; I can do it! I pull and strain and do my best to work the original hunk of ugliness out and I cannot do it. I fear that I might truly break the toilet, so didn't give it my absolute best, but that darn thing was not coming out. I reach down to the base ans as soon as my fingers touch it, black nastyness erupts. What is that?! It was icky and all over my fingers, and clouding the toilet. That was the breaking point. The toilet had won. Unfortunately, it was not done. I had to rescrew the leaking hose back to the toilet and I could not get it on. My trusty Marine had to take over and do that for me.

So, I got the flapper valve on. I did not get the handle fixed and I did not get the pump thingy fixed, and the dadgummed thing leaks and inked me! I admit defeat for the time being. However, tomorrow is another day!