With age comes wisdom. Except in matters of plumbing repair
You live and you learn. With age comes wisdom. Experience is the best teacher.
OK. Then why, after all the pain and frustration I’ve been through, did I find myself the other day trying to make a plumbing repair?
I guess because the first thing to go as you age might be your physical skills. But right behind is your memory. Also, I am cheap.
It wasn’t until I was elbow deep in the water tank of my toilet that I remembered how much I hate doing that kind of stuff. And how bad I was at it.
But when the flush thingy isn’t working right and water is running, something has to be done.
Besides, I have lived in this house for more than 35 years, so the toilet and I have done battle before. I always win, but not without a struggle.
When I needed major water pipe replacements inside the house, I had them done by plumbers, but surely I could handle this.
And the internet told me almost anyone could handle a toilet repair. If you can’t trust the internet, who can you trust?
My go-to solution, procrastination, didn’t work. After a couple of days hoping the problem would somehow correct itself, I had to act. Either that or sell the house in order to pay the huge water bill that surely will be coming.
At the hardware store I asked the guy for one of those tall things that let water in. A fill valve he said, pulling one from the shelf that I had just passed.
And one of those things that keeps the water in the tank until you want to flush. That would be a clapper.
Easy enough, except there are different models and sizes of clappers. I picked a wrong one.
So, another trip to the store. And another trip up and down aisles where I found a few things I didn’t even know I needed until I saw them.
After a few trips to my basement for tools – wrench, pliers, flashlight, I had repaired the fill valve which was easy, but the new, correct flapper was not quite a perfect fit in my older model toilet. It had to be reworked. Then I had to get the pull chain hooked up and at the right length.
This all took a couple of nights.
I’m not going to say everything is fine because that would jinx all the other stuff around the house which could fail. I’ve seen it happen. So, I’ll just say that – knock on wood – I survived.
