drip...drip...drip...

after the great flood of '08 (see earlier posts if you're curious), jon and i joined a plumbing club. not a club for plumbers, but a club where you pay a certain fee each month and twice a year, the plumbers check all your pipes and if something goes wrong, they basically pay for it.

so we were due on friday for our second 6 month check. the plumber...JUSTIN...came in (at 10:01...we had been told it was an 8 - 10 window) and told us that everything was great...except we need a new garbage disposal (this is legitimate), and all FOUR of our toilets needed to be "rebuilt." basically, because the tank bolts (trust me, i have a whole vocabulary you don't even want to touch re: plumbing) were rusting. according to JUSTIN (picture it in script), our homebuilder decided to use "eljer" toilets which come with steel bolts -- not brass -- from the factory, and the stupid builder decided to install them with the steel bolts. imagine. 

anyway, he told us that once you got in there to replace the bolts, you might as well go ahead and gut the whole thing and rebuild the inside. to the tune of...wait for it....$260 PER TOILET. the math alone makes my head hurt. i've been to lowe's enough to know that this is greater than the price of a brand new porcelain throne. please.

side bar: i grew up with one bathroom. jon calls me a "bathroom refugee." when we decided to buy a new home, my first priority was bathrooms. LOTS of bathrooms. with multiple potties and multiple sinks. so many that if one clogged, we could just play musical loos for years. so this house has four...count them...four potties. and i love it. 

anyway. i played the girl card (i call it another term...named after a girlie part, but i've promised to keep this thing PG), and told JUSTIN-in-script that i'd have to talk it over with my husband...being as the tab was approaching the $1500 mark. he fed me some line about how he just couldn't tell how long we had before all four of them started leaking. keep in mind that for three years prior to dennis's arrival, we have only used one pottie consistently. now we only use two consistently. something. was not adding up.

and i began my internet search. have you heard of expert village? they are amazing. they give you videos of ANYTHING you need. including removing and replacing tank bolts. 

so...jon and i...the same couple who used to spend saturdays whiling away hours in pottery barn...spent the whole saturday replacing tank bolts. it took four tries (before we got it right on the first pottie), but we did it. we saved about a grand, in my estimation, even though we lost four hours of life in the process. lost is relative, because anytime we fix something, we learn something new about our relationship. to wit: jon is sometimes right. sometimes. 

but i can't wait until tomorrow, when i get to call JUSTIN-in-script and tell him that for the low low price of $250 each, i'll fix all the toilets he's found "wrong" all over town. maybe we can be partners in suckering people.