In an apartment if something breaks or drips and if it's bad enough to justify the hassle, you call maintenance. So in our last place, we called the office when in February the heater wouldn't light and again when we discovered a lake under the kitchen sink. But that dripping sound coming from behind the bathroom wall we just ignored. After all, it wasn't an immediate problem (though I bet it'll become quite an issue in a few years), and besides, what do you do about a drip inside the wall? Break the wall open? I thought at the time, gosh I'm glad I don't own this place.
When you own the house, on the other hand, and you discover a puddle forming in a random spot on the bathroom floor, you just have to face it.
Dabbing at the dribble with paper towels, I traced the water source to the back of the toilet. Shwew. At least it wasn't some subterranean leak were were dealing with. And it appeared to come from the place where the water from the wall goes into the toilet tank. Shwew again. Considering the alternatives, that's probably the best place for a toilet to leak.
I hesitated to tell Uchenna because I knew we'd have to call a plumber and spend money. My instinct was to stick a bucket (or in this case an old margarine tub) underneath and empty it periodically. Fortunately engineers don't think that way.
Uchenna didn't know much about toilets' inner workings, but he's nothing if not confident. He immediately went to investigate, opening the tank, checking out the flushing mechanism, pinpointing the defective part, and shutting off the water source. He even used his iPhone to take pictures.
Since I didn't get around to telling him about it until 11:30, when we were going to bed, we waited until the next evening to go to Lowe's, where we spent a fruitful hour in the plumbing section. That's a section I have never visited before. Good thing he took those pictures because the many replacement parts, while cheap (yay!), can be pretty confusing in all their variety (but I'm not posting these helpful pictures because they're just not that interesting).
On Saturday, we pulled out the defective guts from our tank and replaced it with the new set-up. And it works. No more leak. Amazing.
So with our new-found knowledge we went after the gurgling sound from our other toilet. Turns out we'd both been ignoring it. Also turns out it's incredibly cheap and easy to fix. Replacement flapper --$4. Confidence as homeowners -- priceless (as long as nothing really big breaks).
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You know, this is one of the major reasons that Aaron and I are "This Old House" junkies. We watch it whenever we can and sometimes it comes in handy. Like the time when Aaron replaced the drain in the bathroom sink. He had seen it on "This Old House" and actually remembered what they had done. I was very impressed and the sink works and looks good.
That's so funny you said that, Marrisse, because when Uchenna read my thing he said, and I quote, "But people who have a house, this will be common stuff. I'm sure Aaron has done this many times; he can build a whole house."
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