Adventures in Plumbing

Recently my sister Becky and I have taken on far too many plumbing projects. They always turn out okay in the end, but always an adventure. For starters there were two toilets in our new house that had tank leaks from sitting so long without water. The first was easy, (as Kaylee says "Easy Peasy") all we had to do was replace the flapper and we were back in business. The second was a different story, we had to rebuild the tank. It took over 30 minutes just to get the tank off it was just so rusty. Thankfully taking it apart was the hard part.

Our next adventure was for Spencer's birthday last week. He said what he really wanted was a new kitchen faucet. The one that was here was gross, and really old! So I called my trusty sidekick and again, we had quite the adventure. It started out simple enough, disconnect the water supply, remove the old faucet. That's where we had trouble (again). We could NOT get it off! We were fighting it like crazy and the stupid thing would not budge, I will not admit how we finally got it off, but I will say, it was NOT pretty. We even called Marla, our other sister to come see our handy work.

Again putting it back together was the easy part. Every time I use the kitchen sink I think "Man I LOVE this faucet." I even felt guilty that I loved it so much and it was Spencer's present so I went and got him a few more because really the faucet is mine. I even offered to trade him presents before I knew what my Mother's Day gift was, but then when I got it, I wanted it too.

On to our most recent adventure. When Becky and Paul bought their house they didn't notice that there was a crack in the toilet bowl in the kids bathroom. They didn't do anything about it because it worked fine. Well, the crack is not all the way to the outside of the bowl and was so bad that Becky didn't even want to sit on the toilet to give the kids a bath for fear of it breaking under her. So who did she call, of course she didn't call a plumber, we have repaired 2 toilets and a kitchen sink, we can do this. I had replaced a toilet before so I knew what we needed to do. As a side note, that bathroom has been pretty stinky for a while. Becky has scrubbed it but nothing helped. We found the problem, UNDER the toilet was DISGUSTING!

So as all our adventures in Plumbing, we started expecting SOMETHING to go wrong. We loosened the bolts and realized the only thing holding that toilet in was the bold on one side and the wax ring. The other bolt was just being held by the wax ring! We took it out and it was so gross, it had not been caulked around so when the kids splashed in the tub it was going under the toilet, I'll spare you the details but it was gross. We (meaning Becky) spent at least 45 minutes cleaning all the disgustingness and the wax off the floor so we could start over.

Things were going so well, too well. We got the bowl back in, got it bolted down (on both sides). Got the tank put together, put it on. We both started saying "This is going too well for one of OUR plumbing projects, I am so scared it's going to leak." So we went to hook up the water to see and the water line was TOO SHORT. So we made a quick trip to her local Kmart picked up a water supply and went back to test it out.

Water on - check
No leaks going TO the toilet - check
No tank leaks - check
Flushes - check
No flush leaks - check
Successful toilet replacement - double check
We did it! And here we are with the toilet WE replaced ALL BY OURSELVES!