Everything's Down the Toilet

Thank goodness for compression nuts. In the evenings this past week and today, my wife and I have been redoing the master bath. And boy did the toilet give me trouble. First, I pull the old one out and set it on the curb. One of the screws coming from the foundation had rotted away.

So after some research and trips to Lowes, I found a flange repair piece, which saved me drilling up concrete. So I bought the stuff and the new toilet. In the meantime, we worked on painting the walls.

BTW, don't believe them when they say you can use that texture paint to go right over the wallpaper. After killing half a gallon of the expensive stuff, we were yanking it off and putting an oil based primer over everything. Smelled lovely. Then we textured and textured and textured. Four or five coats.

Today it was time to put the toilet back in. So all this afternoon and into the night, I worked on it. The initial going wasn't so bad. I got it seated and screwed down. Then I stretched the old copper water hose to connect it to the bowl and it busted. The faucet in the wall looked scary.

I also take a call or two to talk casting with the producer and Jeff Rodgers.

Out near the mailbox, I opened the water connection and saw nothing but dirt (and bugs). Twenty minutes later, with the temperature rapidly falling from 103 to 101, I had dug out enough to find the water meter. Another ten minutes and I found the little brass knob to turn the house water off.

So then I worked on getting the faucet thingie off. But no go. Now it's getting late. The sun is setting. I run to Lowes for what I was hoping was copper eating acid, or a nuclear bomb... I didn't care. Just wanted that fixture off. The worker told me a pipe wrench would work best. So twenty bucks later, I'm back at home and with a lot of effort, the thing turned. And turned. And came off. It was smooth. The darn thing had been soldered on when they built the house. No screw on.

Now I'm in a panic. I cannot turn on the house water until this problem is fixed and it's 9pm on a Saturday. I run back up to Lowes and the other worker takes a look at the faucet thingie and grabs another one from a bin as I mumble about needing JB Weld or something.

"Compression nut," he tells me. "Just put this on the copper pipe sticking out and tighen. You're done." I ask him why in the world they didn't just use a screw on valve when they built the house. He said plumbers like future work. Think you've got to call them to fix this kind of problem. I thank him and leave.

By 9:45, everything's connected, the waters back on, no leaks and I think I'm ready for the sack.

Whew. I'm glad making movies is easier than this.