Drive by plumbing

Last Saturday I noticed that my upstairs toilet was leaking. As in, at the base, through the floor, possibly into the ceiling of the room below.

I didn’t want my bathroom to degrade into needing a visit from the Citrus Avenger or his crusty nemesis, so I ripped out the old toilet (destroying things is my bailiwick), the soaked particle board flooring, and a chunk of subflooring. Particle board is pretty useless, combining the rigidity of glued sawdust with the environmental benefits of formaldehyde. It should not have let anything soak into the subflooring. Thus, I decided I would remove the remaining dry chunk of particle board and use plywood instead.

I made the minimum required trips to the local gargantuan home improvement centers. I installed subflooring, then the flooring, sanded, primed, sanded again. Then, when the completion was inevitable, set up an appointment to have a plumber install the toilet. Based on my previous plumbing experience, I wasn’t even going to try to install the damned toilet myself.

I spent most of Friday morning applying adhesive and vinyl tiles. As I was putting in the last odd-shaped one, the plumber came and, two hours later, I had a toilet installed. It looks good, and the only remaining thing I have to do is stain, cut, and apply the moulding.

(So my fellow males don’t think I’m totally lame, while the plumber was putting stuff in, I got an estimate for reinstalling a bunch fo sinks as the overflow hole is rusted out and looks bad. It worked out to about $900/sink. For that much, I will do it myself.

Observations:

Having kids lessens the trauma of working on/near toilets.

One of the few things I like about these home “status quo” projects is I sometimes get a shiny new power tool out of it, though it has to be related to the job in question. For example, this endeavor begged for a belt sander to get the floor smooth. My ReplayTV project last month netted me a new soldering iron.

On the Bizarro Planet, there’s a plumber/product marketer named Bizarro Jim. His home is plagued by electrical projects, he pines for a position where he can just herd cats rather than using technology, and his bathroom digeradoo playing is on par with my electric guitar.