So a quick call to Guy's plumbers, the local 'good' shop: they assured me that if I couldn't get the thing back together, they could come out and swap in a new toilet in a few hours time. Plumber Dave also gave me the tip that they used a machine called a Sawzall to cut corroded pipes off of tanks.

So off we went to A1 Rentals, and $23.40 later, we had a Milwaukee Sawzall with a new, 4-inch metal cutting blade. It took less than 2 minutes to cut the nut and bottom half of the old brass flush valve off the tank, and this, in the hands of a complete rookie.

So we cleaned up the tank, installed the new ballcock and flush valve, and, at the recommendation of a DIY Web site, bought a $8 kit with all the other hardware - bolts, nuts, lockrings and gaskets and replaced everything with new parts.

So the final bill came in just under $50 thanks to the rental and addition of the $8 parts kit: still saved $450. Unless of course, you count what I normally bill my time for...
Comments 4:37:27 PM    

I didn't make this up: nor would it seem that I'm the only one to think this couldn't possibly be true. According to the NYT, Senator Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota (D), said the idea seemed so preposterous that he had trouble persuading people it was not a hoax. "Can you imagine," Mr. Dorgan asked, "if another country set up a betting parlor so that people could go in — and is sponsored by the government itself — people could go in and bet on the assassination of an American political figure?" NYT says the White House has already removed the most egregious descriptions from the site, which is budgeted at $8 million... you can register starting August 1 for trading which begins October 1...
Comments 8:31:34 AM    

Chris Gulker's view from Silicon Valley - in words and pictures