Home Projects

Well Mother's day was pretty relaxing, and I still dream about that day. It seems like it was weeks ago, but nope, just last Sunday. I firmly believe mom's and dad's deserve more than one day off a year. I'll take 12.

But I didn't tell you all that Rick did that blissfully relaxing day, for me. We have had one constant problem since we bought the house. Knock on wood for me, only one. The toilets. They are both 24 years old, and their poor guts don't want to run correctly any more. Thanks to our master plumber Dave who helped us via email we mostly fixed the toilet in our bathroom. We, and when I say we I mean Rick, replaced all the guts. We had to special order them for this geriatric toilet. Unfortunately the parts are too big for the tank. The lid of the tank kind of rests on them. But the toilet now flushes. You just have to make sure the little flapper thingy sucks down so it doesn't run. I of course always forget to wait and check and usually an hour or so later I think "what is that noise?" Crap, the toilet is running. Then I have to jiggle the handle and walla flapper is down.

Last weekend, ok in reality we noticed the issue about 3 weeks ago, Katie's toilet started acting up. Rick read up on the issue, and with our hard water the pipes that bring in new water can get clogged. So he had to work on those. The toilet worked well for about a week, and only if you put a bucket full of water into the bowl to help the bowl drain. No problem, I was having a pampered chef party and it would be NO PROBLEM to ask each of these ladies to please fill a bucket of water before they flush and after flushing pour it in the bowl as it flushes so their potty will go down. Not embarrassing in the least.

Problem: the night of the party the toilet refused to flush at all. It swirled, and swirled, but no going down the drain.

Good thing: I cleaned my room. No dirty undies in sight. I even took the embarrassing things out of the medicine cabinet. You never know who is a looker, and who isn't. So everyone could use my bathroom.

But by Sunday Rick had decided that enough is enough, and he replaced that toilet. We all trudged over to Home Depot. I picked out the color for the toilet, insisting that we had to have white, and that it had to have a powerful flush. No one should have kids and a slow flushing toilet. This one claims it can flush 150 feet of toilet paper in one flush, and I'm sure Katie will try that out in this toilet's lifetime.

Rick had it installed in no time. It works great. New problem. I noticed after it was installed, that insisting on the white toilet meant that we now have a white toilet and a cream sink. GREAT! Do you think we can uninstall it, take it back, and say we didn't like it because it was the wrong color? I think we'll just replace the sink. Someday.

Crap. Now I have to paint too. I wonder who picked the hot green under the more normal, yet still bright green paint? I bet it looked "electrifying"!!!