Eau de toilet…
We have been without a furnished upstairs bathroom for quite a few months now. What originally started as a simple toilet repair turned into a major renovation. At least I’m not the only geek in the world who is chemically incapable of finishing a household repair.
Sometime last Summer the toilet in our upstairs bathroom started leaking horribly. Every time it was flushed a constant stream of water would dribble down to the downstairs bathroom. It seemed like a simple enough repair so Brian and I tore up the toilet, replaced the seal and dropped the old toilet back into place. We turned the water back on and the toilet still leaked.
We inspected the floor and all the wood underneath the toilet was rotten. So we opted to tear up one of the two layers of wide pine to replace with plywood underneath the toilet. But hey, since the floor underneath the toilet needed repair, why not pull out the shower and repair one of the rotten layers underneath that?
Removal of the first layer of wide pine revealed that the second layer was in desperate need of repair as well, so we removed both layers of wood down to the joists. But hey, look at that, there was massive damage to the joists where they had been cut to make room for old pipes. So we had to tear up 1/3 of the floor to sister the joists. Now the plywood wasn’t lining up properly…so we just tore up the whole damn floor from wall to wall.
We dropped in the plywood subfloor and thin sheeting, slathered the room in adhesive and dropped in a roll of linoleum to replace the aging square tiles. Replace the toilet seal, drop the toilet into place and…it leaks! Inspect the toilet…look at that…a crack in the porcelain hidden deep underneath the toilet!
Grrr…purchase a new toilet, drop it in and it’s good as new!
But, we can’t drop the tub and the shower back into place until the skylights are resealed. And, since we’re doing major renovation, might as well tear up the floor in the room adjoining the bathroom to fix the slope and replace the junky linoleum. But, we can’t lay the new linoleum until the cabinets are finished because the previous owners had hacked together a kitchen out of the room. But we can’t finish the cabinets until the skylight is sealed to prevent water from leaking into the new cabinets.
Damn. All I wanted was a toilet.
