Midget plumbers
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
There really is a market for them.
I think i became more convinced of this fact than EVER when the toilet in the downstairs bathroom decided to stop working so well. I don’t know anything about plumbing, so i called over Gary who knows stuff about stuff. He’s a very knowledgeable guy to have around. So we find out that some kind of column and floater thingy device are not working correctly, so we head over to Home Depot and buy a new one. Easy, right?
Not so easy when we got back. The problem stems from the fact that there is about 8” between the bowl of the toilet and the wall. Yeah, not much can fit in there. To make matters worse, my brother recently got a bidet washlette toilet seat. It has all kinds of tubing and electrical stuff that toilets traditionally have never needed. I used to affectionately call these seats the “Gundam Toilets,” an allusion to all the mech/robot cartoons of Japan in the 80s.
So you have me, a not so small asian female, and Gary, a very big Chinese dude, working in a 8” wide x 24” long space. Mostly it involved squeezing your head and upper body into that space so you can TRY to manipulate a crescent wrench around an immovable nut, only to find that the tubing and the proximity of the wall prevent any sort of torquing of said tool. It was very frustrating. Gary could only fit his head there. It took us about 3-4 times as long to fix the toilet simply because we could not REACH the darned thing!
After removing all the tubing and plugs and extra bolds and stuff, we managed to finish the job in 2.5 hours. We rewarded ourselves with coffee, chocolate, and the idea of hiring midgets for the next time that thing breaks down. What a difference that would make! He or she would be able to get right in there! You’d think someone else would have capitalized on this idea already, but i guess he and i are original thinkers.
All I can say is that I’ve never had my face that close to the toilet or the floor of a bathroom before. I can probably go without ever doing that again. And if you ever come over to my house, i want you to appreciate my toilet and sing songs of praise to Gary and me. Thanks. 
There are vastly underutilized market opportunities for midgets. I mean, how about midget pre-school teachers? No more sore backs from bending over to talk to 2’6” kids!
Posted by BRY on 02/23 at 03:07 PMThat “Gundam” Toilet what horrible to install, too!! Talking about tight spaces, while I was installing it in the bathroom (before Kat and Gary fixed things), I actually got my head stuck between the toilet bowel (ewww!) and the wall. Thank goodness Kat just cleaned it. Still, I felt like one of those animals on Animal Planet who are featured on TV because they stupidly stuck their head into someplace and got stuck. Sigh. . . I think we should find the people who designed the washroom downstairs and stick their head back there!
Posted by on 02/25 at 08:35 AMthat G--dam toilet was horrible to repair because of the incredibly tight space. although i am a chinaman i am far from being a small man. this job could also have been done by an anorexic contortionist plumber.
also, thanks kat for not using your digital camera hahaha
Posted by on 02/25 at 09:00 AM