This is why I never get anything done

A while back my husband and I noticed that the toilet in our 1/2 bath downstairs would suddenly start running all on its own and it was determined that the rubber seal at the bottom of the upper tank was leaking water into the bowl and making the toilet feel as though it had to fill the upper tank to keep up.

It seemed like a simple fix...turn off the water, take out the old rubber thingy, install the new rubber thingy and voila!

Sadly, that wasn't the case. Which is how I ended up with my downstairs bathroom looking like this for a couple of days:


As you can see from the picture above, I had to take the entire back of the toilet off in order to even access the big plastic nut that attaches everything to the inside from the outside.

You can also see the lovely instruction sheet from the kit purchased to take care of this task:

Oh yeah, and waaaaay down there in direction #6 is the small disclaimer that part you have supposedly bought the kit to fix, doesn't actually come in the kit. It is sold separately.

AAARREGHHH!!!!!!!

I do enjoy how they just slide that information into parethesis like a true after thought. It reminds me of why I never cook from a Martha Stewart cookbook. Because more-often-than-not, halfway through the recipe, you get to a step that tells you to go out to the garden to the tree you planted last spring and drain the sap for 10 hours with a tool that you can only get from Williams-Sonoma on Tuesdays in years ending with odd numbers.

In any case, I do feel rather satified that I eventually pulled this off and did, in-fact, fix the toilet!