Urk.

[wombat1138]

Making another one of my occasional attempts at home repairs-- one of our toilets hasn't been shutting off, so today I finally went to the hardware store in search of replacement parts. The simplest thing to do would've been to just buy a new internal floater, which is what the problem turned out to be; it's what I'd suspected, but hadn't definitely checked beforehand. But I noticed that an entire new refill assembly thing wouldn't cost *that* much more than just the floaty thing, and would eliminate the need for floaty-thing replacement later.

So now I have the tank emptied out, a towel tucked underneath to catch drips and serve as a head-rest, and increasingly tired arm muscles. Right under the tank, where the water pipe snakes up into it, there's an annoying plastic nut that I've been turning round and round for about a half-hour without much visible result, because the attached tube on the inside keeps turning around with it. I suspect this may be a two-person job, so one person can immobilize the in-tank tube while the other one unscrews the nut, but unfortunately the wombat-consort is out of town for the next day or two, so I'm stuck with this on my own for now.

At the least, I should probably go buy a new wrench-- the one I've been using is rather slippy, so I keep having to use both hands just to preserve the proper jaw width every time I re-seat it on the bolt after a quarter-turn, which is the farthest that the handle/wall spacing will allow it to turn each time.

And I can't really back up now and just try to put everything back the way it was, either, or at least I don't think I can-- the plastic bolt has managed to loosen just enough to start dripping. I'm tempted to call in the professionals, but I'm not quite ready to give up yet.

Argharghargharghargh. *drip*

Comments

[qadgop.livejournal.com]

Don't suppose you have pliers of the appropriate length? I'm wondering if they might provide a better grip.

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

Well, actually when I went back to the task after posting that, I tried hanging onto the nut with pliers down underneath while rotating the tube inside the tank, and that popped it out just fine.

However, now I've killed the little flexible metal pipe that connects the wall spigot to the tank, so I'll have to go get a replacement. Probably tomorrow rather than today. Grumble.

[qadgop.livejournal.com]

Hrm. Well, it's still progress, even if destructive. Nice to see I called it with the pliers; between this and helping someone install a ceiling fan the other day, I'm turning into quite the backseat handyman. Heh.