Lileks: Getting a handle on toilet repair

In the course of a decade your average household toilet will need a repair. The flapper might be loose. It may run in the middle of the night, as if worried. It could periodically sigh, as if it had come to regret its lot in life. (And you can't blame it.)

Last week the handle broke, and I actually was happy: Here's something I can fix. Done it before. I can do it again. I mean, toilet repair is to home maintenance what "making toast" is to cooking.

The handle — a plastic chrome side-mount — was $12 at the hardware store. But perhaps the big box store had something nicer. Pewter, or brushed chrome. That will impress the occasional guest. By their toilet handles shall ye know them, after all. Gee, no ersatz plastic chrome for this guy, he popped for the real thing. Better ask him for investment advice.

I moved on to the big box store and found a handle in brushed chrome. It was as heavy as a blackjack, as if assuring you that when you flushed something it stayed flushed. The package promised it fit all tanks, including those with the handle on the side.

The package also said "INSTALL WITH CONFIDENCE!" I didn't know if this was a promise or a command. How sure of myself in general do I have to be? Must I puff out my chest and whistle while I work, periodically shouting "You've got this!" to no one in particular?

Is there a hotline I can call in case I suddenly get cold feet? "Yes, 1-800 BUC-MEUP? I'm changing my toilet handle, I suddenly have cold feet."

"Sir, did you shut off the water before opening the hole on the bottom of the tank?"

The first step was removing the lock nut from the part that went through the hole in the tank. I twisted it. Nothing. Twisted it again. It didn't budge. Let's try turning it the other way … no. Nothing worked. I put it in the fridge in the hope it would contract a little. No. I worked on it in both directions for five minutes and realized I was suddenly experiencing a severe confidence deficit.

It's not me, I reminded myself. It's the part. I drove back to the store. Went to the plumbing department. Showed the guy the problem. He said, "Turn it the other way." I turned it the other way, and it popped right out.

My confidence was undergoing a free fall in a mineshaft, and the canary in the cage was starting to wheeze.

"I did that," I said. "It's just because I came here and did it in front of you that it worked." He nodded in a way that said I would be a story told in the back room for years to come. Now I can never go back there. They'll recognize me and say things like, "You need a paint brush for plaid? Maybe a ladder that goes both up and down?"

At home, I installed the lever, then fished the chain from the stopper to reach the end of the lever.

So I went to the hardware store and bought one, describing my lock-nut humiliation to Michael, the hardware guy. I think he said that "some of those toilet-tank lock nuts are counter-threaded," which would've explained my difficulty. Or he realized that I was in a negative-confidence situation and needed reassuring.

Back home again, I installed the new flapper. The chain was two inches short. There was absolutely no way I can get the lever to reach the chain — or, for that matter, to operate correctly. No position worked.

Because the hardware store had a copy of the original unit I was replacing, I decided to give up on the brushed-chrome life entirely, so I got back in the car for trip No. 4. I considered going to another hardware store, because confronting Michael with evidence of my failure would put my confidence somewhere near the earth's molten core.

"Oh, man up," I told myself. "Just put on a COVID mask and a baseball cap and some sunglasses and do it."

When I got home with the plastic faux-chrome handle, I installed it in 45 seconds, which brought confidence back to nominal levels. I packaged up the fancy handle, and noted that the directions not only asked me to follow the toilet-tank company on Twitter and Facebook, but urged me to put a picture of my handiwork on Instagram so the world could admire my skill. This I did.