Toilet Almost Fixed

New Art Lasered To The Living Room Wall...


I'm trying to not admit to myself that I've caught some kind of creeping crud, but regardless the form of the malady I managed to sleep in until after 10 AM this morning for the first time in months, and that was after not sitting up all night writing or drawing or generally screwing around on the internet.

In the middle of the night I did finally subscumb to a shivering fit of mechanical repair work after tiring of listening to the toilet in the guest bath leak for the past three weeks.

The initial quick fix was to just turn the supply valve off between uses, and in a bout of slovenly thought I was considering just building an outhouse on the patio and being done with things for good.

Then I realized that we'd never possibly use that much compost in a Condo, and the Condo Nazis would complain if I used the wrong color paint or shingles, so I reluctantly fell back to Plan B.

I had two kind of repair kits on hand--one that included just the flapper valve and a second one that included almost everything but the tank and bowl.

After fiddling around with the mechanisms a little more I realized that I could probably just get away with the flapper valve replacement. That made me feel a little silly for having waited so long, but hey--I have to spend a certain amount of time goofing off every day--it's in my contract with God when he made me.

Any way, the good news is that my efforts worked in solving the intial problem.

The leakage stopped with the new flapper and with a little further adjustment of the fill valve settings.

But then Murphy's Law took over with the secondary failure of the lever arm inside the tank that pulls the little chain thingy.

I guess another trip to Ace hardware to spend a few more dollars will have things squared away by sometime tonight.

On the other end of the home improvement spectrum, this afternoon I finally got a couple of wall sconces and a big 4' x 3' framed piece of my pen & ink artwork that had been laying around gathering dust for a month mounted on a bare section of wall in our living room.

The star of that exercise was my new laser level. It is an amazing convenience, and it's going to make a great deal of time saving difference when I start hanging kitchen cabinets and building soffits & fascias over in Brunswick.

Now I have to think about what to do for dinner tonight. I'm still guiltily staring at leftover pork & chicken that's been sitting covered in the fridge since Monday night. I hate wasting food, but I just haven't been able to get fired up to start cooking four or five nights a week again yet.

I guess that I'll see if I can talk Pat and the little hound into taking me over to somewhere that has a pet friendly patio, then come home and beat on the toilet tank some more.