I have had mega home repair FAIL so far this weekend, and not just once, but three times! There is an update below, from after Jeff came to help Tim and me.
It started last night. After getting back from grad school, Rich and Brad came over and we made attempts at diagnosing the toilets. For both, we thought simply replacing some of the hardware in the tanks would solve both issues. We went to the hardware store on a search for parts to repair the two toilets. For the one downstairs, we decided that it needed a new fill valve, and the one upstairs just needed a new flapper (insert obligatory giggle here).
After making our best guess as to what exact parts I needed to buy, we returned to the house to start our toilet surgery. We first tried fixing the toilet upstairs, as it should have been a simpler part replacement. While the flapper installed just fine onto the pegs the old flapper used, the arms of the flapper were too large. This prevented the flapper from completely covering the drain for the tank, and the tank wouldn’t fill all the way. FAIL!
It was too late to return to the hardware store to get a different flapper, so we decided to try fixing the toilet downstairs. Initially, I thought I would just replace the toilet. Then I started looking at the cost of a new toilet, and thinking about how I would then want to also replace the sink to match and how much that would cost. It sounded like it would be much cheaper and less work to just replace the fill valve. It turns out we were wrong.
The first problem was with trying to get the old valve out of the tank. We just couldn’t find the right sized wrench to loosen the hose from the valve, and when we finally found something that sort of worked, there was little room for leverage. Eventually Rich was able to get the hose disconnected, and then we removed the old valve, but not without dumping onto the floor the water remaining in the tank.
We started to install the new fill valve, but for some reason the hose did not want to connect to the valve. It turns out that the hose and the valve had different sized fittings, and the adapter that came with the valve won’t fit onto the hose’s fitting. FAIL!
That brings us to today. Tim came over for the weekly Uganda talk (which was a FAIL of its own, but I’m not counting that towards the home repair fails). He brought over the replacement timer for the washing machine. After much effort just to remove the broken timer, we finally got the new timer installed. Then we realized that the stub on the new timer was broken; the knob would not snap into place. When we pulled on the knob to test out the timer, the knob came right off instead of activating the washing machine. FAIL/2!
I’m only counting that as a half FAIL because Tim and I decided that a little epoxy or gorilla glue or something will be good enough to repair the timer and knob situation. After that was decided, I took a look the water filters, since the washing machine had been slow to fill with cold water for the past few months (yes, this was on top of the fact that the timer wasn’t functioning correctly). I turned off the water in the house, and then I disconnected the hoses from the washing machine. I saw that the hoses were connected to the filters, but I couldn’t get the filters out of the washing machine. FAIL/2!
That’s a half FAIL because my father-in-law is coming over to help Tim and me figure out what is going on with the filters. Hopefully we can figure out a way to get them out of the machine to clean them. If we can get that figured out, then Chris and I can maybe catch up on our backlog of laundry that has built up because of the slow/broken washing machine.
Our house guests may not be able to go to the bathroom, but at least I’ll have clean clothes to wear.
Update: So, after spilling a lot of water and needing to get some additional tools, Tim, Jeff and I got the washing machine working again. There’s a new hose for the cold water inlet, and it is now connected to the sink faucet again. The flow from under the sink just wasn’t cutting it. We were not able to disconnect the hose from the valve under the faucet, either. Bah! I hate owning a house sometimes.
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