Our house is old to begin with. Things don’t work as well as they used to. And apparently toilet bolts are not installed the same way anymore either. When my partner got all aggressive and removed the old toilet, he also took out the old bolts because they were old and gross and probably original to our 1956 Ranch Style home. I was not paying too much attention to this because, well, it is a tiny bathroom and if you put more than one person in you wouldn’t be able to open the door to get out. I’m being serious. It is really that diminutive. This didn’t really become an apparent problem until nine months later when we finally started putting in the slate tile and had to attach the bolts to the closet ring, for which we figured we’d need an extender and also had to get a new ring attachment because the old bolts were screwed into the ring and the new bolts you just can’t do that with unless you are under the house, which I was not about to do.
No problem, right? Just screw on a new ring into the subfloor over the old ring and everything will magically be fixed, right? HA!!! As I started to screw the new ring into the subfloor, and was four of six screws in, I realized the last two screws wouldn’t be going into anything because, well, there was no decking and you could see down to the bottom of the crawl space where two beady little red eyes were staring right back at me menacingly, as if telepathically communicating its intentions of performing bodily harm. Okay, so the last part might not have happened, but the crawl space beneath our house is scary as all get out.
So anyway, after the base and shoe molding was done, the ring had been installed for a few days, I decided to tackle putting in the toilet by myself as my partner has been quite busy with work and volunteering. I opened the box, put the wax ring in place after zapping it in the microwave for two five second bursts to bring it up to room temperature as it had been in the garage and was a little cold, lifted it up and set it into place. All went rather smooth and it was only slightly off level, so I opened the package of toilet leveling shims (see, I told you we thought of everything) put them into place and marked where each would need to be trimmed before cutting and putting them back. I then tightened the bolts to the toilet, which we got the easy snap kind that are supposed to snap off where the excess is, and the first one came off easily, but the other one was quite stubborn and I couldn’t get it to come off when the doorbell rang and I thought it was a solicitor so I ignored it, but then there came knocking and another ring and the dog wouldn’t stop barking, so I opened the door to the garage and saw my sister’s car in the driveway through the windows in the garage door.
After about an hour of chit-chatting about life with my sister, I went back to the evil little bolt, this time with a hacksaw, and began cutting through it the old-fashioned way, which after about half cut I grabbed my pliers again and it came off. I put the caps on, grabbed the tank, got it all attached, hooked up the water and everything was going smooth and I thought, wow, I did it! I flushed the toilet three times and checked everywhere for leaks and was well pleased that there were none then went to go eat dinner because now it was 8:30pm and I hadn’t eaten anything since 11am. When I was done eating, I went to check on the toilet again, but this time there was a problem… it was leaking. Apparently on our quest to think of everything, we didn’t think that a new hose would also be in order, and it was compromised between the hose and the nut connector. So I turned off the water supply, put a bowl under it and decided I could go get a new one the next day, which I did, and so now we finally have two working toilets in the house again!
Sa-weeeet! Nice job guys. Can't wait to see finished project after decor. Beautiful!!!
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