Psychotomy

what a fun way to spend an evening.

a few days ago “we” “accidentally” flushed a couple of those clorox toilet wand brushes. the picture on the box where it shows you throwing it away looks like the picture they show of you cleaning the toilet, it’s kinda hard to tell. I mean, other than the words under it saying ‘DO NOT FLUSH’ an’ all :/

and so begins a saga

So, the next morning we notice that the two toilets it flushed down weren’t really flushing properly anymore. Shit. Spend some time with a plunger. Went through the immense joy of sticking my arm up a toilet to see if i could reach it (I couldn’t) (i took a long hot shower and used a LOOOOT of soap after that :o)

Then I went and bought a “toilet auger” which appears to be the replacement for snakes. They have snakes for sinks, but the only thing that mentioned even in passing the concept of a toilet was the Toilet Augur. Pricy SOB’s too. (or they are when you pick one up at home depot and guess what to get). Didn’t help. When you pull back the handle so you can insert it, it doesn’t really fit in the bathroom. ANY OF THE BATHROOMS. I have 4 for christ’s sake, and it’s too big for ANY of them! WTF is this thing for??? cleaning the toilets at the palace of agrabah or something? cripes. through much work I managed to kinda get it inserted, but no joy. Did almost come apart in my hands. for this much money I get something less sturdy than a kids squirt gun???

SO! This afternoon I came home early and started working on taking the first toilet OUT. Figured “if I remove it entirely, I can try to get to the problem from the other side.” using a cup I (slowly) drained the water out of the resevoir/tank. Took off the tank. (actually drained both toilets while I was doing that step). Went to unbolt the base/bowl. Wow. those are kidna rusty and useless. Wrench, no good.

Washed up and ewnt to my sewing class, picked up a screwdriver set w/ socket-drivers. kiir found the socket wrench set we already owned. tried those. 3/8″ is too small, 7/16″ is to big. WTF! but apparently the #10 fits OK (metric vs “) turning. turning. turning. after 5 minutes of turning the screw nut I’d expect it to have gone somewhere. Nada. Thing has apparently come unseated on the bottom, but is still help down. !!!

Luckily, I anticipated this. I bought a hacksaw at HD when I was out. Resist this, you motherfucking screw. And it did. it’s cramped and badly angled enough behind the toilet that it took me a good 5-10 minutes of sawing with one hand and prying with a screwdriver in the other trying to hold hte bolt where the saw could BITE. jesus.

Get it cut, lift off the bowl and have kiir ready to throw towels under it for the drainage …. except there IS NO DRAINAGE! the water in the bowl is sitting in the bowl. I think we’ve established that the clog is in the trap somewhere :o

But it turns out that the old wax ring is all kinds of disgustingyl ugly. So we’re gonna replace the whole effing toilet tomorrow. HD’s closed, so we couldn’t go out to buy (a) new toilet, or (b) putty knife to scrape out the old ring.

We’re thikning of just buying 2 and flipping out the other toilet when I remove it, too. Since they’re fairly old anyway.

Posted in: general by attriel /