How to Replace Toilet Handle

When we moved into our house last year,

the downstairs toilet handle was broken, as shown below:

 

Last week, I replaced it.

All by my lonesome.

(Unless you count the little one underfoot.)

 

For $5.

 

And now I'll show you how to do it, too.

First, buy a handle replacement kit.

I found this one at Lowe's.

Next, take off the top of the tank.

 Then turn off the water.

Flush the toilet so the water level goes down.

And since the water is off, it will stay down so you don't have to get your hands wet.

Take a look at the white plastic piece hooked on the end of the

handle lever: mine is plastic, but yours might be a metal

chain of some sort.  I prefer those, but didn't feel the need to replace this one,

since there's nothing wrong with it.

Remove the 'chain' from the lever, see below:

 Carefully set that aside.  You could drop it in the water if you want, or you might be able

to drape it/hook it over the floater rod (the gold piece in the pic above).

Or have a handy helper grab it for you and hold it in place.

 Next, unscrew the nut on the handle...it's right up against the tank.

I neglected to take a picture of it, until it was done.

Dispose of those pieces.

 

Next, insert the new handle lever into the hole.

 Slide the new nut onto the lever, and turn it a few times so it

won't fall off while you reconnect the chain.

 Reconnect the chain.

If you have the weird plastic kind like we do, make sure you double it through

the lever.  And pay attention to which hole you attach your chain to.

When you push the outside handle, you want the chain to lift up the flapper.

If you look up to the picture with my daughter's hand, you will see 

what the flapper is - it's the large flat piece on the bottom that's attached

to the chain.  That picture shows it in the up position.

The picture above that one shows it down.

Once the chain is attached in the correct spot,

tighten the nut to the handle.

Here's my completed photo.

Turn the water back on.

 It will flow into the tank.  Mine stopped where it should.

If yours doesn't, you may have altered something that you weren't supposed to.

Good luck.

 Replace the tank lid.

Enjoy the new handle.

Painting the Living Room

You may be wondering how our Christmas was.

It was great. 

Short and sweet and just our little family.

Very relaxing.

How many of you can say that?

Well, it was relaxing until the kids went to bed.

Then we took down all the decorations and cleared out our first living room.

It's the room that you enter from the front door.

Since the other living room is adjacent to this one, and you can basically see both rooms

completely when you are in the other, we haven't yet decided on what to

call each room.  Sometimes one is the 'fireplace room',

or the 'circle couch room', or just 'the other one'.

One of these days (or years) we will nail it down.

So here are some before pictures, so you know what a white wall looks like.

You can see my husband prepping the window with tape.

He put a bunch of plastic sheets on the floor, but instead of taping them all down,

he used a putty knife to tuck them under the baseboards.  It worked great!

We weren't too concerned with the baseboards, because they are of some sort of

laminate material that the paint wipes right off.  And if it dries before you 

notice it, it takes less than a minute to get the paint off.

Easy peasy.

 Front corner

 He's so far away...the room is 27 feet long!

 The girlies were occupied upstairs with a movie,

which is a super rare occurrence around here.

At least for the kids.

 The color we used is Pistachio Ice

It's a Valspar color (which is available at Lowe's),

but we took the sample over to Home Depot and bought Behr paint.

We didn't really have a reason, that's just what we did.

 He really was excited to paint, even if he doesn't show it.

 Here are two after shots.  I tried to include the arch, since we left that white,

so you could get an idea of the change in color.

I'm sitting on the circle couch and looking at the walls right now, and the green 

in the picture is not the same green that are on the walls.

Maybe sometime I will take another shot of the wall and it will be more accurate.

Probably after we get some more work finished in here.