Job Months

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I’m sure you’ve had them too.  Job-like months when everything seems to happen all at once.  Your bank account grows anemic, making Quicken feel more like quicksand.  Our most recent started when the roof leaked yet again during heavy storms—I sure am glad climate change isn’t real!  Can you imagine how it’d be if we had extreme weather?  This house dates from the late nineteenth century and presumably, if such super-soakers had always been common, well, the roof would’ve been replaced down to the joists.  In any case, in our fourth call to the roofers over seven years, we faced yet another scary bill.  Then the sink began to leak.  Some minor repairs I can do myself, but this house was an either a DIY’s paradise or purgatory.  For us, mainly the latter.  

A couple years back there was a leak from the upstairs toilet tank.  Now, I’ve replaced the guts of a toilet more than once.  I bought the parts and went to work.  It was then that I discovered a previous owner had purchased a fancy-brand toilet for which toilet guts couldn’t be purchased (well, maybe from Japan or China, by slow boat).  You’ll probably agree that without an outhouse, a working toilet is more or less a necessity.  I watched YouTube and my wife and I went to Lowe’s and bought a new toilet.  I’m sure angels were laughing watching the two of use wrestle this metric-ton porcelain throne up the stairs (and demons laughed as we got the old one down).  Installing it looked straightforward.  When it started to leak, the plumber—we’re on a first-name basis now—came over.  He pointed out the faulty mounting pipe and asked if I’d installed it.  It was from the previous owner with high-class taste in toilets.  He turned to his companion and said, “This is why we’ll never go out of business.”

So a twenty-dollar toilet gut replacement turned into a $600 full toilet replacement.  This was in my mind when I had my head under the sink.  We seem to have stopped the water getting in from above, at least for the moment, but now it was clear that the base cabinet under the sink was going to need to be replaced as well.  I called Doug and he said he’d slot me in as quickly as he could.  I’m pretty sure Job didn’t have indoor plumbing.  He probably had to repair his own roof a time or two, though.  Only in his case, it happened just before God made a bet with Satan.  So the story goes.

Sticky Thoughts

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It’s a common problem.  You need to stick two things together.  Perhaps you don’t have welding or soldering equipment lying around the house so you buy some glue.  Now, I don’t know if you’ve been in an adhesives aisle recently, but the choices are overwhelming.  Not only that, but ephemeral.  I mean the bonding action has improved since I was a kid, but the problem is I can’t use glue fast enough.  Like the old-fashioned White Out, you open a container and use it as quickly as possible because it’s going to dry out.  I was reminded of this when I needed to stick some fabric to plastic (don’t ask).  I tried some Elmer’s left over from when my daughter was in middle school sometime in the second Bush administration.  That didn’t work.

Then I found a bottle of Gorilla glue.  The problem is that it sticks to itself.  So much so that I couldn’t get the bottle open.  I could see there was some liquid life in there, but the top half of the contents seemed to have congealed and clung to itself.  That wouldn’t work.  I eventually found a tube of plastic glue and since one of the pieces for my project was plastic, I figured that’d work.  Still, it made me wonder about the conscience of those who make adhesives.  Surely they must know the mindset of, “oh, I’ve got lots of stuff to fix, so I better buy a reasonable size bottle.”  Only, the fixing comes at widely spaced intervals and the glue can’t last that long.  Various Crazy Glues are the worst.  They’re one-time openers, just like White Out.

My most recent trip to the adhesive aisle brought a moment of clarification.  Although I try to reduce waste, one company (not a sponsor), was selling little, tiny tubes of Crazy Glue.  Single-use units.  And you get six/eight per shot.  That works for quite a few applications.  Still, I’ve got a number of half-full (I’m an optimist) bottles of various glues that can’t seem to get over themselves.  I guess the lesson we’re to take home is buy in small quantities, even though the unit cost is higher.  You can always buy two, no?  Things don’t break at convenient times, unfortunately.  You run to the closet to see what glue you’ve got.  Then you drive to the store to get some that’s not all gummed up in the bottle.  It’s a dilemma.  Just like that nagging question of why someone’s trying to stick cloth on plastic.

Toil et cetera

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Few items are as necessary for modern day life than a functioning toilet.  If you live in town and don’t have an outhouse your other options are pretty limited.  Religion scholars tend to know quite a bit about what goes on in toilets, so I’ve repaired my fair share over the years.  When we had a leak in a fill valve, I had to wait for a weekend to do the repair.  I figured half an hour and thirty dollars at most.  I left it for an afternoon project.  Once I got the new fill valve installed, there was a problem.  The tank wouldn’t fill with water.  It had been clear that the faulty part was the fill valve, as it was hissing and sputtering and there were no leaks into the bowl.  I made a late trip to Lowes for another valve, following the logic that the one I’d bought earlier must’ve been defective.  It didn’t work either.  We had to flush by buckets of water.

Sunday after church I rushed to Lowe’s since, logic dictates, it has to be the flush valve that was the problem.  These are the only two parts inside a toilet tank that require repair.  So I got the tank off, and after running to the hardware store to buy a specialized tool to get the nut of the valve off, I learned that “fits 99% percent of toilets” left that troubling 1 percent for a reason.  Our toilet was special.  The parts were not standard size and neither my local hardware store nor Lowes had the parts in stock.  If we wanted a working toilet that day we would need to replace the entire thing.  So we went toilet shopping.  Hauling a toilet up the stairs is something I hope never to have to do again.  By late Sunday afternoon my half-hour, thirty-dollar project had turned into a multi-day, three-hundred dollar project.  I followed the installation instructions religiously, but, of course, it leaked.

I ended up having to call the local plumber we’ve got on speed-dial.  We’re in our fourth year in our house and we had plumbers here at least six times.  I picture their office assistant grimacing each time our number comes up on their caller ID.  The plumber came and, apart from generating serious tool envy on my part, demonstrated how everything from the soil pipe up had been misinstalled by over-confident DIYers.  I try not to cut corners with plumbing or electrical.  Despite how easy it is to install, or even repair, a toilet, you have to have the correct foundation.  And even scholars of religion need to admit when they’re in over their heads.

Read the fine print.