The Terrible Twosome Take Out a Toilet

For several days last week the downstairs toilet was behaving erratically. But hey, last week was Concert Week so I can be forgiven for not seeing the pattern here! It flooded on Thursday, worked fine for a while, flooded on Friday (horribly inconvenient, as previously discussed), worked fine for a while, but by Saturday it was clear that something was drastically wrong. On Saturday afternoon, any time the upstairs toilet was flushed it provoked an instant and catastrophic flood from the downstairs toilet. Jeff was out - ironically, working on someone else's bathroom - and he didn't get home until after 11pm. At which point he valiantly tried to fix the problem until well after midnight, but couldn't.

So with one toilet out of action and actually out of our house on the back patio, and the other toilet also out of action, it was an interesting weekend. We found out that we could not use any upstairs sinks (flood) but thank goodness we could still use the shower (no flood). We were very keen to get to church on Sunday for obvious reasons and were - gasp - actually early! I suppose it proves it can actually happen with sufficient incentive... though I am pretty sure I do not want to be incentivized like that again!! (Is that even a word?) 

After several rounds of questioning, we think it was a team effort. Nicholas threw it in, and Kate flushed it away. Whether Kate flushed it on purpose or whether she had flushed anyway and Nicholas just had impeccable timing as he threw, we don't know. We don't even know what it was. All Kate will tell us was that it had colours. They are old enough to cause damage but not really old enough to explain what they've done!

The plumber came out on Monday afternoon - at which point we were effectively at 48 hours without bathrooms! -  and snaked our main sewer line. Whatever it was was about ten feet down the line and lodged fast. He got it cleared and told me to flush the upstairs toilet as a test. I have never been more apprehensive and happy about flushing a toilet in my life!

Here is Kate, flusher extraordinaire, and Nicholas the toilet destroyer with the results of their efforts. I am just hoping that they don't team up on any other little projects for a while!