If you read my blogs you know that I have ideas that range
from enormous vacuum airships, submersible aircraft carriers, robotic lawn
mowers and vacuum cleaners. In stead of
working on these projects I write about them on my blog and write science fiction
action adventure novels.
The perfect example of why I am not a prolific inventor is
my extreme bad luck with fixing or building things and with home repairs. Case in point was this weekend I decided to
attempt to fix something which only required changing two bolts. My youngest boy loves to help me with any project
and was excited about getting to help me and use some tools.
The project was to replace two bolts that hold the tank on
the back of the toilet to the base of the toilet. For months now the tank has been wobbly on
the back of the toilet. So for a meager
investment of four dollars and something I was prepared to remove the bolts and
put some new ones in and stabilize the tank on the back of the toilet.
I shut the water off behind the toilet and flushed it to
drain the bulk of the water out of the tank.
The reason the tank had become wobbly is because the original bolts had
become rusted and degraded to the point the tank was loose. The original bolts were in such bad shape
that they couldn't be tightened or to my later discovery removed by taking the
nuts off the bolts.
After two hours of negotiating the bolts forcefully I finally
removed them from the tank. I installed
the new bolts and turned the water back on to fill the tank in order to find
out that through the process I cracked the tank removing the old bolts. So I had to run to the hardware store to see
if they sell just the tanks for toilets.
To my surprise they did. I bought
a new tank and ran home with it to install it on the toilet.
I had to take everything apart from the current tank and
install it on the new tank only to find out that the mounting bolts from the
new tank were closer together by a inch and half than where the holes were on
the lower portion of the toilet. Long
story short this tank wasn't going to mount onto this toilet. It meant now I had decisions to make, a
definite trip to the hardware store and hours of work ahead of me.
My sons attention span had ran out before the first trip to
the hardware store. Five hours into this
little project of switching out two bolts and I was now buying an entirely new
toilet, watching a video on line on how to install a toilet, and preparing to
completely tear out a toilet that hours before worked perfectly and only had a
wobbly tank.
In order to spare you all the horrible details, the other
things that were broke in the process, a bathroom that was partially flooded, after
thirteen hours of work and three trips to the hardware store I finally had a
working toilet with a tank that didn't wobble.
My plans to fix a wobbly tank and replace two bolts had cost me a small
fortune and ruined my plans for the entire day.
I think I’ll stick to writing blogs and novels and leave household
repairs to professionals from here on out.
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