You Can Do It Yourself And I Can Show You How, Part I

I woke up with some heavy stuff on my mind. You know how when things be on your mind and sometimes you have these dreams and/or nightmares that just really rock you to the core.

Plus, you wake up with a stiff one. You know everybody always talks about the woman’s body and understandbly so, but the man’s body has its own form of nature as well.

Well, anyways, I get up and head to the restroom to take care of some important porcelain business so I take my seat, get comfortable and let nature take its course. I’m trying not to be too graphic.

As I’m proceeding, I hear something running and no it wasn’t me. I was quite regular. Fuck you very much lol.

It was coming from the toilet so I compartmentalized in my mind whether it was leaking on the floor or inside the bowl. I was able to determine that the running water was coming from inside the bowl and I immediately knew that it was the fill valve that had gone bad.

I finished up what I had to do and took the top off and sure enough the water was still running out of the thing. Now normally, these things have an excellent shelf life. I’ve only had to swap out one the whole time since I’ve been a homeowner.

Usually, you would end of swapping out the toilet before you had to swap out one of those. I start going over how I’m going to do it and that’s when I thought about my grandmother.

I thought about all the times that I would see her do stuff like this coming up and in later years how we would do these things together. Anytime there was a problem, we would always put our heads together, do a little brainstorming and always come up with the right solution.

I thought about all the times that I would see her in bathroom messing around with bathtub faucets. I remember how she would swap out the old handles for some better ones.

She would always have this little metal square with the little alley wrench and I always wondered what that crap was for.

It wasn’t until some time later that a lightbulb went off in my head and I was like, Ooooh! This metal thing went inside the fixture which would allow you to turn the hot or cold faucet handles on.

Ahhh. The joy of homeownership. Isn’t it grand!! You bet it is. You just have to do it yourself because if you call a plumber, those cats be wanting an arm, leg, a kidney and your spleen. Greedy mofos!

You save yourself an awful lot of moolah doing things on your own or well, what your skillsets allow you to do. Not all of us can be Bob Villa. Remember that cat?! I used to watch This Old House religiously. They used to make that shit look so easy.

That’s until you realize that your house was built back when Abe Lincoln was walking around on this planet and you have about a hundred million wires.

You be like, but the homie on Ask This Old House said that there’s only three type of wires then why am I seeing 14 thousand of them. Scratches head.

I better suck it up and call a electrician. Fun times indeed. I’ll probably eat and then tackle that toilet later on today. I’ll let you know how it all goes but it’ll be much easier then the one downstairs.

First, the area was extremely, small so trying to get my arms and frame in there so that I could take off that lug nut was quite the task. Also, dealing with that pesky toilet line where they had some kind of disc mechanism as a way to seal the leak.

You had to line that son-of-a-bitch up perfectly because if you didn’t you would have your very own Nile River running all over the damn place. I tried to change the line but if you changed the line then you have to change out your shut off valve.

Sometimes, you get lucky and all you have to do is turn off the water at your main water line. Then you unscrew it, wrap a little plumbers tape around the pipe’s threads and then screw your new valve onto it. Then tighten it down, turn the water back on, check for your leaks and you’re finished.

Then sometimes, you have to use a blow torch on it to remove the old toilet shut off valve. I damn sure didn’t feel like doing that. It’s still holding up very well too. It’s one of them fancy toilets from Kohler. One of those one piece joints.

Gotta love my grandmother; She slways did love the finer things at life. I could only imagine my grandfather’s face when he saw that receipt to that invoice.

My grandmother be at the store and be like, “it look so pretty.” “Grandma, that toilet costs about 5 billion dollars. It does look pretty but it’s going to have to continue looking pretty right here in the store. I’ll take you by there once week and we can admire it’s beauty together.”

They don’t have toilets that costs that much in the White House. Sean “Puffy” Combs or whatever he’s calling himself these days, doesn’t even have a toilet in his crib that costs that amount. Lol. I Just got back from toying around with that toilet and they must’ve put cement on that damn lug nut.

I might have to bite the bullet and give a call to my local plumber. Either that or get some better tools. I’ll keep you all posted on the undergoing situation.