Will Part 3 also be The End? You’ll have to read to the end to find out!…or scroll down and cheat by reading the last little bit but just know I silently judge people who do that. 😉
For the third day in a row I went to Canadian Tire after work to buy a part for my toilet. Lucky for me they refunded two of the flappers I had bought, I mean, I knew they’d refund the unopened one but I thought I might get some hassle over the opened one. Then off to the plumbing repair aisle, which I now can find with my eyes closed. Can’t find anything else in that store but who needs anything else when you have the fascinating plumbing aisle to peruse?
Just like with the flappers there are a lot of choices for the handle mechanism. Some are obviously different styles but most are fairly similar. I remembered to bring my broken handle, it was in a Ziploc bag, so finding the identical one should be a breeze, right?
Kinda…I guess. I had been hoping to find one that looked the exact same but that didn’t happen. Instead I found one with a similar look to the hidden parts of the mechanism but the handle was a completely different colour to my toilet and I’m sorry but no, just…no. The handle I used to have was silver (in look, it was actually plastic I think), my toilet is some weird cream type colour, and the handle I picked up was shockingly white. I couldn’t bring myself to put a white handle on a cream coloured toilet, it would look weird.
After some hunting I found one that instead of a plastic arm for the inside of the tank it had a metal arm, but it was the same length and width as the broken one, and connected to a silver handle. Also, the nut and bolt part seemed to be a close size match to the broken one.
It seemed promising so I decided that was my new toilet handle. I took the fastest route from the plumbing section to the cashier, because I know what that route is now, and headed home.
Once home I glanced at the instructions, I mean, how hard can it be to replace the handle of a toilet, and got to work. After a little meneuvering I got the handle mechanism in place, attached the chain for the flapper, gave it a test flush, tweaked the tightness of the handle, tested again, mentally patted myself on the back for now having a working toilet (it had to be a mental pat, no way was I touching anything until I’d washed my hands!), put the lid of the tank on, washed up, and walked away from the toilet.
Three evenings spent working on this project and it was finally done! And done because I’d fixed it, not because I called my landlord and had him come in to fix it. 🙂
Hours later when going to wash up I discovered a little hiccup…it wouldn’t flush. Something was wrong with the handle when I pushed it, it wasn’t moving properly. Confused, I took off the tank lid and tested the handle and everything worked fine. However, it worked because the tank lid was off and the inside arm part of the handle mechanism needed more height than the tank lid allowed to be able to lift the flapper.
What madness is this? Seriously?! My irritation drove me to fiddle with things instead of assume I had to take the handle back and buy a new one. In all the ways it mattered this handle is the same as the broken one, this has to work! And what do you know, perseverance paid off and with a bit of tweaking I got it working. Turns out I had to angle the arm piece to aim lower down than I had when I initially put it in so it had room to move.
Then, and only then, did I decide it really, officially, for certain, was fixed.
Thank the universe this project is done and I get my evenings back to deal with the oh so important tasks of watching Netflix, and YouTube, and pretending I am going to exercise but then not exercise for some made up but almost legit sounding reason…oh, and of course cuddling the cat. I think he’ll be almost as happy as I am I won’t be coming home from work to spend time in the bathroom working on the toilet.
The Amazing Shrinking Woman 
Congratulations on a job well done!
Thanks! 🙂