Day 395

Well, the inner workings of the toilet decided not to function. :P In other words, the part attaching the handle to the plug broke. So after a day of taking the lid off and manually pulling the plug, I went to get the replacement parts. Not being able to just buy the chain, I had to buy a handle and the plug. Even things that should be easy, never turn out to be quite as easy as you think they should be. First I could not loosen the nut by hand...so off to the basement in hopes of finding a wrench. I found the whole set quite easily. But after bringing them upstairs, I find out that even the largest one is just too small. Now I know we have a larger one. But with us working on so many areas of the house at once you can never tell where a tool might end up. After not finding it in the basement or on 3rd floor I decided to see if I could get it to work with vise grips. Success.. :) It still took just a little bit, but I did get the handle off and was able to easily put the new one in. With the assistance of the girls (they held the float so the toilet would not continually fill with water as I was working) I started working on the plug and chain. It looked as if the new one should slide right on in. But getting the old one out was giving me some problems. It was attached with some pins to the pipe. After some amount of fiddling I got it off and the new one on. Attaching the chain to the handle was easy. Then after a few worrying flushes (the plug would not go down and cover the drain on it's own) I convinced the plug to shut again after the water had drained. YAY! I working toilet again.