I hate plumbing!

I hate plumbing. It is evil. It knows the most inopportune time to break. It breaks in the worst places (i.e., unreachable). Any threaded fitting will be bonded together with some substance that is the strongest bond in the universe. Pipe wrenches do nothing but break pipes, usually inside of walls (as opposed to loosening stuck fittings that are outside the walls). And any trip to the hardware store for a plumbing repair will take 15 more trips back to the store to exchange or purchase another part. I don’t know if plumbing has the mark of the beast (666), but I bet it’s either 665 or 667.

Our toilet broke the Friday before my parents were coming down for a week. Fortunately, we have 3 toilets available. Two inside the house, plus we have a nice bathroom outside that is primarily used for the pool, but it’s a full functioning bathroom. So even though the toilet in the master bath broke, there were two others to use. Normally when a toilet breaks, you run over the local home improvement store and purchase a part or two and your back in business. Oh no, it’s never that easy.

Apparently we have the Cadillac of all toilets ever made. It’s a Case toilet. It’s pretty nice, I guess, as far as toilets go. It’s designed so that it can never overflow and bunch of other nifty toilet technology that most normal people never consider in their entire lives. The problem is, they quit making Case toilets in the late 70’s or early 80’s. Apparently, there’s not much of a market for Cadillac toilets. Since, I couldn’t just run to the local hardware store, I hit the internet. Sure enough, some place in New Jersey has parts. Cool! Elation! And they well ship them directly to my door for only $200. Ouch!

Now some of the Do-It-Yourself types are screaming that the monitor right now, “Just replace the entire toilet! They are only $100.” Remember, plumbing lives next to the beast. Apparently, when you are designing the Cadillac of all toilets, you don’t worry about what everyone else in the industry is doing – you know better. After all, you are building a better toilet. So what we have is a wall mount (yes, that’s correct Virginia), a wall mount, residential, tank type toilet. Yea, let me see you get one of those at Home Depot. There are a few companies that make such a beast. But remember, with plumbing it’s never quite that easy. It seems that our Cadillac toilet has a different bolt pattern then the currently available wall mount toilets. So you can’t just unbolt the old one and bolt on a new one. Now this can be fixed by simply tearing a whole in the wall, replacing the header mount with a new one, patching the wall and hanging the new toilet. Yea, like I believe that.

Yesterday evening, I was very happy when the man in brown showed up and delievered us from our we-only-have-two-working-toilets-hell that we had been living in for 1 week, 4 days and 15 hours. I managed to get out all all the old parts and install the new parts in about an hour and I didn't even break anything else or need 15 trips to the hardware store. Woohoo! I think the planets must have been in aligment or something.

Seriously, sometimes we get so caught up in the little things. We could have let the problem toilet ruin our vacation, but we didn't. We could have let the $200 foul our mood, but we didn't. We have much to be thankful for. This is just a minor inconvience. The more I remember that, the more I am less concerned with that evil plumbing.


Life_, Fun_, Pondering_,