I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to tell the story of fixing the toilet.

Maybe it doesn’t seem like much to some, but fixing the toilet is a huge win – or a minor victory, depending on which vantage point you take.

Remember the story about the perpetually clogged upstairs bathroom sink that turned out to be years of whiskers, soap and toothpaste clogged with plastic toothbrush covers, beads and whatnot?

The toilet

Well, the toilet in that bathroom has been a problem for at least a decade, maybe even longer, so fixing the toilet is a given at this point. It’s a circa 1930s American Standard, with a funky mechanism that is half old technology and half new, with a jury-rigged stopper that had to be manually readjusted with almost every flush. I looked up diagrams – the copper overflow tube is supposed to screw into the bottom of the tank, but doesn’t fit snugly, so a hard flush would dislodge the tube completely. The rod guide and rods attached to the tank ball were forever in need of adjustment, and frankly, one of them looked like it would snap at any moment. The rubber tank ball was deteriorating and rarely properly sealed the tank, so water was always leaking, the float was always lowering and water was always running.

By now you may have guessed (based on the previous post about the sink) that my ex thought himself handy. He would spend untold hours sweating, cursing (in two languages) and often, crying nearly quarterly, fixing the toilet. We’d clear out and make ourselves scarce whenever he was “fixing” anything. It was rarely an easy endeavor. Invariably, he blamed the children or our guests for being “too rough” with the toilet and that’s why it always had to be manually adjusted. Still, the problem persisted, and rather than try to find a different way to solve the problem, he struggled to make the existing mechanism function. That toilet was put in over 20 years ago, and we thought it cool to have “period” bathroom fixtures. SMH.

Much like the perpetually clogged sink, I was determined to fix the blasted toilet. Enough was enough.

The store visit(s)

So, off to Home Depot I go, thinking I will have to find a new tank ball, not knowing that this part of my mechanism is the old part that no one manufactures anymore. So, I settle on a plastic ring that should help to keep the water from running. Feeling pretty good about myself, I head home.

I think you have probably guessed by now that the ring idea (it was a $7 piece of plastic!) was a no-go. So back to the store I went.

There’s a crusty old guy stocking the shelves (did I mention this was on Independence Day?) whom I decide could probably help. Here’s how that went:

“So, I have this antique toilet with a ball stopper on a rod but I don’t see them here. Do you know if any of these other things will work?” I ask. “I don’t know why we thought it was a good idea to put an antique toilet in the house.”

“Nah,” he says, “None of this stuff will help you. You might have to go on the manufacturer’s website and see if they sell the older model guts.”

“Do you think I should try one of these flapper thingys?” I ask, holding up one very intricate looking apparatus. He looks at me like I’m insane.

“You can try but I doubt that will work. Your toilet doesn’t have a flapper, does it?” I shake my head no. “I don’t think that’s going to do it,” he says, shaking his head. Clearly he thinks I am off my rocker.

I’m about to give up when I see something different behind one of the bigger flapper thingys. It’s a smaller, all-rubber flapper with an adjustable opening for an overflow tube. I’m thinking, it can’t be any worse than what I am dealing with right now. I pull one off the wall triumphantly.

“This might work,” I say to the guy. “It’s less than five bucks, what’s the worst that can happen?”

“You can always bring it back if it doesn’t,” he says, “they don’t care, they take anything back as long as you have a receipt. Good luck.”

Off I go, returning my $7 piece of plastic for a $5 piece of rubber.

The triumph

I get home, disassemble to ridiculous copper rods, guides, tubes and deteriorating rubber tank ball and slip this fabulous five dollar find over the copper overflow tube that I have secured, as best I could, to its proper position in the tank. A little shimmy here, a little shimmy there, and the flapper is in place, covering the flush valve opening. I flush the toilet and wait.

The first thing I notice is I don’t have to bear weight on the flush lever. In the before times, you had to exert pressure to make sure those wily rods actually lifted the ball up. The second thing I notice is that once the flush is done, there is no hissing or gurgling that come with an improperly sealed opening. It’s done. That’s it. I don’t believe that I actually fixed the issue, so I flush the toilet again. Same thing happens.

Holy crap, people, I fixed the damn toilet! After decades of annoyance, inconvenience and wasted water, I fixed the damn toilet!

With a $5 piece of rubber. No previous plumbing experience necessary.

Here’s the site I searched for the proper part terms (other than “thingy,” of course.)