Al Bundy was right. If a man's home is his castle, then the toilet is his throne.

My throne has been leaking. Just on the inside, running a little after it should have shut off. Usually this excess trickle could be cured by simply flushing the toilet once more. But that elegant solution used up an awful lot of water. Especially if you had to reflush twice.

After much prodding from the other half of my domestic partnership, I went down to one of those mega home-improvement stores and bought a complete tank equipment replacement kit. Figured that I might as well get all-new stuff inside the tank so I wouldn't have to fix anything in there ever again.

I thought this job would be a snap. I had a precedent on my side: When I lived in not-quite Amish country, I fixed a similar problem with a 50-cent gasket. Didn't want to go whole hog on a rental place, you know.

But this time, I bought the big kit. Twenty bucks worth of valves, stoppers, bolts and washers.

Mistake #1: I didn't have the right tools. I do have a monkey wrench, which worked great on one of the nuts. But the bolts that held the tank secure against the bottom part (I'm sure there's a name for it, but like you've already figured out, I'm no plumbing expert) had to be undone with a big screwdriver while holding the nuts underneath with the monkey wrench. I have some pretty impressive screwdrivers, but I didn't have one manly enough for this task.

I read ahead in the directions and discovered that I was going to need to hacksaw a piece of pipe. The blade on my hacksaw is exceptionally dull, so I figured I'd pick up some new blades during trip #2 to a (different) mega home-improvement store.

A solid plan. At this point, I wasn't worried. My best friend from high school always said you needed a second good car while working on your own. That way you could make the necessary runs to the auto parts store. Same principle applied here. There's always a second trip to be made. So I bought a big (foot-long, 3/8" blade) screwdriver and a couple of blades. Went home to do the dirty work.

Not so much dirty as wet. The tank never fully drains (I'm not sure why they're designed that way, but they are), and so I had to throw a towel underneath the tank when I unhooked it from the bowl (the bowl! That's what the bottom part is called! Of course...). Wet towel. Wet floor. Wet me. Then I struggled to get all of the old pieces out. The worst one was the drain valve (again, don't hold me to any technical terms). It's held in by this huge plastic nut that, truth be told, was too big for even my monkey wrench to handle. I went at it for 15 minutes. Almost broke it (which would've been just fine with me), but the thing held fast. When taunted by my wife, I invited her (in a not particularly solicitous manner) to give it a shot herself. She couldn't even get a good grip on the thing.

Light shone down from the heavens and the hand of God touched my shoulder. When I tried the nut again, it slid right off. I ripped that last piece out, cleaned the tank with Bon Ami and Lysol and then put the new pieces in, being careful not to over tighten (you might crack the bowl, said the instructions) in a flash. Popped the tank back on top of the bowl and turned on the water. Sis boom flush! Yee-ha!

Then the leaks came. Turns out when the instructions say "you might crack the bowl" they weren't talking about scrawny old me. I could (and should) have tightened those things until my hands cramped up. Off comes the tank, re-tighten all the seals and ... another leak. At the connection point of the water shut-off valve and the metal pipe heading up to the tank. Trip #3 (back to the first mega home-improvement store) to buy some thread sealant. Two bucks for a tube of stuff that promised to remove all the skin from my fingers in one minute flat. But it worked like a charm.

One last leak in the one connection I hadn't tightened: That big ol' plastic nut holding the drain valve in place. I waited until the next morning to remove the tank (once again) and do the job. No water. No leak. Glory glory hallelujah! The throne had been restored to its once and future greatness! The king may now rest comfortably knowing that the most important part of his castle is, once again, in perfect working order.

Jon Worley does much of his finest work on the throne.