High Five!

If the toilet repair made it sound like the resolution was anticlimactic, or that the conclusion was forgone, it was anything but. The pump is attached to the base of the toilet with screws that are designed to cut their own threads in the plastic. If the screws are too tight the threads in the plastic strip; too loose or use screws that are a fraction of an inch deeper and sewage leaks out. We spent a lot of time and effort looking for a way to make the old parts work because we wanted to preserve our options. We didn't want to screw up the new part by over-tightening and be left with no way to fix the problem. How tight is too tight and how loose is too loose? The effort to make the old base with the stripped screw holes work failed, but thankfully we didn't screw up the new base and all is well. High fives! It is so nice to have the toilet working again. Though it was convenient to toss our bags of garbage in the unusable bathroom. Now we have to make room for them somewhere else.