Saga of the Tortoise Toilet

I bought a house a couple of years ago that is a bit of a lemon. I'm not a neophyte housebuyer, and have been fantastically fortunate in my choices, with or without mate, for decades, not speaking of money but re the nature of the house. Even my studios have been in interesting places. I've remodelled sucessfully something like seven places. Now I'm just waiting for this one to tilt 45 degrees and then I can say, "see, I told you it was a lemon".

Today I'll tell you about the non-master bathroom toilet. I'll save the master bath for another episode.

In all my other housing and studio adventures, I had salary coming in, and, if not money in the bank, credit room within reason. This time I'm impecunious and more careful re expense than I was before, and I've always been careful.

Is that enough of a lead in to the toilet saga? You don't need to know about the 400+ pound guy and the plastic drain in the master bath?
Ok, then.........


Despite the jolly review by the fool inspector, not everything worked right upon my move into the house. The toilet in the minor bathroom was crudded up with lime and flushed poorly so I wanted it out. I could live with the one in the master bath.

The fellow whom folks knew here and was licensed and seemed amenable and that I hired to tear off the gawdawful trellis appenditure to the garage and tile my floors... installed, with his helper, the new toilet, a particularly small and ugly little thing that I had purchased as the now obsolete distance from wall mattered re fitting. Low flush, no plush. I gather there are adaptors re the hole position (fill in your own joke), but a larger toilet would leave little clearance for stepping into the shower.

It flushed ok that day, if not, y'know, like the toilets at the airport. Plus, I was catching on that I might have bought into a low water pressure site, and other tangential considerations.

It didn't flush okay after that first day. Slow city. But, I figured it was a small toilet and extremely low flow and had other millet to grind, that is, after I tried plungers and bought and tried a snake.

At some point when not many hours had passed, I stopped dealing with that and just used the master toilet. This was just past the end of the contractor's time, and other stuff was going on in all our lives. I let a little time go by.*

And in a little more while, I talked to the contractor and he said it could be this or that or that, and it was likely the yellow ring plugging it and they'd just fix it for free, soon.

A year went by, I got used to the situation. My just getting used to it has to do with finances, not my savvy.

Meantime, the contractor and the helper split up and helper went out on his own. Helper was over at Dys and Diane's the other day, and Dys mentioned My Weak Toilet to the previous helper, now guy on his own, and he said he'd fix it no charge if they'd messed up. (I always liked him.)

So he dropped by today. Took the toilet off and found a conglomeration of impacted toilet paper in the drain. (Not from me, I hardly used it.) He didn't have a snake. Ah, but I did. He snaked, and, in time, water flowed. He thought he should be sure, maybe use one of those things with spiral teeth, which he needed to buy anyway.

We tossed that back and forth and I threw a wrench into it - a wrench my brother in law purchased back when he was visiting and helping me in California, one humongous wrench, and left with me, as I presume he had another back home.

So, he went over to Home Deposit to look at whatever they call those gnawing snakes, and came back saying, it's got to be in the toilet, he had talked to people there.

Spent another while, and I hear, JO!!!!!,

and there we have it -

A child's plastic screwdriver. Yellow. Was in the U-tube of the toilet.



But wait. I bought the toilet new from Home Depot. And, past that, no child, alas, has been in my house. I don't even know any children here in Abq, although there is a recent neighbor with a couple of girls, a year past my clogup, lest they be suspected of breaking and entering.


My surmise - I bought a repacked and returned toilet, which didn't work for someone - but I bought it as new. Someone who had a child, probably a young son.... whose toilet suddenly didn't work and he returned it.

I can't complain to Home Depot now - I am not returning the toilet which, after a year or more now works, and I didn't photo the original box, which must have been taped instead of pristine.

I did get the offending plastic yellow screwdriver. I may have to work up some kind of art sculpture from it...




*I have been in a position to have people not be paid for serious projects on my ok, and utilized that to have jobs torn out, or partially torn out. But in private life, I am just another schlemiel, or schlemielessa.