Flush

Before we bought the house, we arranged to have some plumbing work done. Over time, the toilets, like aging hippies, had embraced the eco-friendly, “low flow” ethos to an absurd degree. There were also issues with the hot water and the drains in the tub. With two little girls who spend much of the day covering themselves in food, dirt, and magic marker, this just wouldn't do.

We agreed to use the same plumbers the previous owner had used. I guess people do this because we assume that, despite visiting hundreds of houses in the area, these guys remember the little idiosyncracies of each house, which will of course save time and money over someone who has to “get up to speed” with your particular sink. That seems rather presumptuous of us as homeowners, secretly proud of our unique pipes and deceptively simple spigots.

The job had been quoted several weeks earlier by someone who wasn’t there the day the work was actually done. It ended up taking a few hours longer than expected, and I gathered from several hushed phone arguments that the estimator had somewhat underestimated the work involved. Nonetheless, they stuck to the original quote, and were consummate professionals, never once making the easy “we’re taking a bath on this job” pun.

They were, however, anxious to wrap up and get out of there by the end, so some things weren’t perfect. For example, the new toilets ran incessantly. I did my best to tinker with the mechanism inside, returning regularly to turn screws a half-turn and tighten plastic things. After a few days of this patient, trial and error approach, my father-in-law Paul showed up and simply bent the rod holding the floating ball slightly, fixing it instantly. (A few days later, I was walking through the house and heard water running somewhere. My heart sank, until I realized it was the pipes leading to the sprinkler running outside.)

Another thing the plumbers did was install new drain stoppers in the bathtubs. The old lever-style ones no longer moved, so they asked if we were okay with a “toe kick” style drain stopper, the kind where you just push it down to close the drain and push it down again to open it, kind of like a retractable pen. We told them that was fine.

After Erin gave the girls a bath the first time, though, she told me that the stopper wasn’t working and the water was draining out. I asked every question I could think of.

“Did you push it down?” I asked.

“Yup,” she said.

I was stumped, but was busy with something else and forgot to go take a look. The next day, she told me the same thing had happened.

“Don’t forget, you have to push it down,” I offered hopefully. She assured me she had, and it seemed we were at an impasse. But unlike our ongoing, impassioned “it’s too hot in here”/“I think it’s fine” debate, maybe there was a simple answer to this one.

I went upstairs to check out the situation. I wasn’t really sure how to adjust the stopper, so I just started twisting it counterclockwise.

Sure enough, the whole thing came unscrewed and pulled out of the drain. That’s when I realized the top unscrewed, revealing an adjustment screw. Perfect! I grabbed a screwdriver and had that tub holding water in no time.

Screwdriver in hand, and somewhat emboldened by my success, I wondered what else I could tighten. Surely there must be a loose screw somewhere! The screwdriver and I roved the house, and it didn’t take long to find our next victim, a loose cabinet handle.

Before

We taught that screw the meaning of the phrase “tighten until flush.”

After

And just like that, the tightening spree was over.