Case of the Dysfunctional Toilet

Our upstairs toilet has had a lot of small problems over the last year and D has done a very good job playing plumber and making it work (he's pretty good as a plumber, too). A few months ago, he fixed the flusher by shortening the chain and he adjusted the fill valve so it took less water to fill the tank.

The latest problem in our toilet battle has been that the tank slowly leaked, so that it would be empty by the time we needed to flush (this was compounded by the fact that we don't use this bathroom very often).  So to be thorough, we went to Home Depot and bought a complete rebuild kit (which would require removing the screws to the tank and other scary things) and a smaller kit to replace just the flapper valve. We decided to try that first.

We* drained what little water remained in the tank and took out the valve (both the red plastic flapper and the actually gooey valve seal):

The seal was pretty misshapen, which made us hope that we had found the reason for the leaking water:

D peeled one side of the paper and got ready to squish the new seal into place:

 Then he put the rest of the flapper valve together and reattached the chain:

 We turned on the water, flush, and let the tank fill. Then waited and hoped that the water stayed in the tank (incidentally, the inside of our tank is gross and rust-colored...any ideas on how we should fix that, or if we should bother?):

Then, get this, it worked! For about two days. And then the water started leaking again. D decided that he might not have squished the seal into place squarely over the tube. Fortunately, Home Depot sells just the gray little seal without the rest of the kit. So we took everything apart again and D put in another seal. He felt more confident that he had lined up the edges of the tube with the seal.

And it worked. Temporarily. Again. For a few days, the water stayed in the tank where it belonged. Then, mysteriously, it started leaking out maybe 50% of the time (independent of how long the toilet sat between flushes--sometimes half a day, sometimes several days). And THEN, it started working consistently again. We have no idea what is going on with our mystery toilet. D thinks that maybe the valve seal is settling into place (it is gooey and malleable after all) and that explained the toilet's changing status.

It would appear that now, after about 6 weeks, we've got a consistently working toilet. But I don't trust it one bit and I know it is biding its time to start malfunctioning again (probably at a maximally-disruptive time, like during the holidays when we will have a lot of house guests). At least we have the rebuild kit in our garage, in case we need it. (By which time, I'm sure we will have lost it.)

*By "we," I mean D. I was there to give moral support, pass tools, and take pictures.