Minor household surgery
If ever, and with the strange interventions of government, this could be an issue, they decide to close the hardware stores on Sunday, we will see the average home fall in ruin. No other time so fits the schedule of the handy man.
Today, I replaced the flush rod on both toilets. One, an emergency intervention. The other, prevention. Given time, every toilet faces minor surgery, wherein the innards get pulled and renewed. Maybe the water has something to do with it. At some point, the nifty little rocker arm that so amuses the young child (PLOOSH!) will hang. Upwards. A defiant response to gravity (or an affirmation of the balanced lever). And after several jiggles, and a moment of observation inside the tank, the handy man will head down to the box store.
The variety is enough to give pause. When I asked the clerk, he said that size does matter, and wondered if I’d looked inside the tank to see what was currently there. (Of course!). I made a half-hearted gesture, said that what I needed was about “this long” and showed a preference for brass over polycarbonate.
Not that the rod ever breaks. It’s ALWAYS the pivot point. There should be a rating system. Something like: designed for two years of daily flush, or some other appropriate time period.
At home, the one that wasn’t broken replaced in about thirty seconds. The emergency case required two pairs of pliers, a good long look without my glasses to see what was not happening, a test run on the new one: the nut goes on backwards, so forget the “righty-tighty, lefty loosey” you learned along the way.
And now we’re good for another stretch. Two flush toilets. Used to be, that meant you were rich, not handy.
