OOPS!

 First I want to thank everyone for your kind comments on Tuesday's post. I really don't know what I would do without you guys. I read them often and they really help me get through. I am taking lots of your advice and using this month for me and making plans for the Hubby and I no matter what the next cycles hold, but that's another post.

I was planning on keeping up with the photo challenge, but this weekend got a bit crazy and the Hubby and I ended up doing something not very fun.

Yesterday I finally was able to take apart and clean my Poppy's old roll top desk. Another piece of furniture I got when my Nana moved out of her big house. It is beautiful, but it smelled. My poppy was a heavy smoker and he did a lot if his smoking up in his office at his desk so even though my Nana cleaned regularly there was a thick film of tar and whatever else from the smoke. I washed it gently with wood soap and water and scrubbed the detailed handles with an old toothbrush to get in all the cracks. It took hours and many new buckets of water, but it's as clean as it's gonna get and most of the smell is gone. The rest of the smell will go away with time and polishing with citrus oils.

So I went to dump my last dirty bucket of soapy water in the toilet and like it was in slow motion I saw the toothbrush, which I apparently forgot in the bucket, get sucked down the toilet with the dirty water! All the Hubby heard from the other room was a loud OOPS! I couldn't help but giggle at my stupidity. We got the toilet auger to see if it would grab the toothbrush and pull it out or maybe push it through. It did neither. It seemed like water could still get around it, but toilet paper was getting caught up on it. It was late so we decided to take care of it the next day.

The Hubby googled how to get a toothbrush out of a toilet. He laughed as he read solutions from parents whose 2 year olds likes to flush different items. He told me I was worse than a 2 year old! Hehe. They suggested we try a wire hanger to pull it out. After a half hour of that it was obvious we couldn't reach it. It seemed like a lot of them tried everything including plumbers, but ended up having to get a new toilet.

When it comes to home repair we are cheap. We do everything ourselves. We didn't want to call a plumber so the only other option was to take the toilet apart. Thank goodness we only put it in 3 1/2 years ago so it wasn't as gross as it could have been.

That was today's project. I went to the hardware store and got a new wax ring for when we put the toilet back on and we got started. We drained all the water out and took the tank and everything we could off the base. We flipped the base over and could hear the toothbrush move. We kept flipping it to different angles and putting the auger through to try and push it out. I don't know exactly how long it took, probably 45 min or so, but we got to a point that we thought we would just have to get a new toilet. It wasn't coming out. I flipped the base over one more time and the Hubby used the auger again. He stopped and told me it felt different that time. Sure enough when I flipped it over there was the toothbrush! I was so happy to see that disgusting thing!

Our toilet is now just as clean as the day it was first put in. I cleaned every inch of it before we put it back together and the fresh caulk around the bottom looks perfect! I will never again dump a bucket of cleaning water without checking it first!