Anyway, when last we checked in on the downstairs powder room, I had just grouted the floor. (Man, is it really that long since I posted? Yeeesh. No wonder I've been getting flak from the regular readers. Sorry about that.) Since then, we installed the vanity and sink, painted and rehung the door, and, well, installed the toilet.
Three times.
Sigh. Yes, there's a story behind that; get comfortable, and I'll spin you our tale of woe...
I must admit, right up front, that a large part of our issues with the toilet, at least at the beginning, are my fault. You see, it was my first real tiling job, that slate floor in the bathroom, and let's just say that maybe doing slate wasn't the best idea for a rank amateur such as me. The tiles weren't anything even approaching uniform in size, they were not cut square, and they varied widely in width - even across a single tile. Couple that with a lack of experience on my part, and you have a recipe for an uneven floor. It didn't look too bad:
But as we've seen, looks can be deceiving. That being said, I did put quite a bit of effort into the tiles under where the toilet would sit, and thought I'd done a fair job at that, at least. So I was pretty confident that we would be able to seat the toilet on the flange fairly easily.
Hahahahahahahaha! I'm so stupid!
Anyway, this particular project started with a trip to Rona to buy a toilet flange extender kit, a wax ring, and some rubber wedges to help level the bowl on the slate (you know, just in case). We got the parts home, and set to installing the toilet.
You know, I don't even remember exactly the steps we tried to follow the first time. Maybe I've blocked it out, maybe I just don't really want to remember, but let's just say it's a good thing wax rings are cheap. We tried installing with the extender and a wax ring, and it didn't work so hot. So we took the wax ring off, and set the toilet in place without it, and tried to level it using the rubber wedges. That didn't work so hot either, and neither of us was at all confident that we'd be able to do it all.
It was time to call in the professionals. Well, A professional, anyway.
Sadly, Leonard the miracle worker had given up the plumbing business in favor of sailing around the Southern Hemisphere on a tall ship or something, so we needed a new plumber. I called the guy who installed our floor, and he recommended a company that he had used a fair bit. Well, those guys were too busy to come and install a lone toilet, but they recommended a guy they had used for some other small jobs, and as luck would have it (and after I name-dropped the company that recommended him), he was available to drop by and install the toilet for us.
So, a couple of Fridays ago (a day later than he had originally planned, but at least he called and let us know, right?), he showed up, and promptly installed the toilet - in about thirty minutes, start to finish. Hell, he finished so quickly, he even had time to take a quick look at the drain under the vanity - which, of course, leaked after I installed it the first time. I thanked him profusely, saw him out, and headed off to work.
When I got home after work, I noticed some drops of water beside the toilet, underneath the tank bolt on the left side. Huh, I thought. Maybe he didn't tighten it enough for fear of cracking the tank.
So I grabbed a wrench and gave the nut a couple of extra turns. No dice. After checking it over a few times and fiddling with a couple of seals, and realizing that it still leaked, I talked it over with the War Department. I figured I could probably fix it myself if I took the tank off, but we agreed that we didn't really want to pay a professional to do a job and then have to fix it ourselves anyway. So I called the plumber back, and set up a return visit. (The vanity still leaked after he was done, by the way, but I figured that out and fixed it myself.)
So the following Thursday, he came back, removed the tank, doped up the gasket (which is what I had planned on doing), and reinstalled the tank. He tightened everything up, I saw him out, and headed off to work.
The next day, I got an email at work from the War Department, who had double-checked the toilet on her way out in the morning, and noticed that it was still leaking. I sent her an email back that had a lot of swearing in it.
So that afternoon, I got home from work and checked the toilet again. Sure enough, it was leaking at the gasket between the tank and the bowl. I called the plumber again, and he said that it might be because either the tank or the bowl had a casting flaw that was causing the gasket to not seal properly. He said he could come back and install the other toilet (the one we had bought to replace the Toilet from Hell, ironically), but that it would cost us for another trip as the defect wasn't his fault.
Well, this, now, this was starting to piss me off. So I had a closer look at the toilet, and noticed that the tank really wasn't secured all that tightly. As a matter of fact, I figured that if I just straightened it out and tightened the bolts, it would work just fine. So I emptied out the water, doped up the rubber seals, and reseated the tank - nice and tight this time.
No dice. Still leaked from the gasket between the tank and bowl. Much swearing ensued.
So once again, the War Department and I talked it over: I reckoned, now that I knew how to install the bowl over the flange, I could install the damn thing myself. She agreed, and the next day I dragged out the other toilet and unpacked it, and then started removing the other toilet.
Well, right away, I noticed some weirdness. For starters, the plumber hadn't used the right plastic and brass washers on the floor bolts - he had used the metal ones meant to connect the tank and bowl, and therefore had nothing to snap the little plastic bolt covers to. He got around this problem by filling the bolt covers with plumbers putty and squishing them down over the bolts. Not quite how I would have done it, but I figured maybe it was a plumbers' trick to make it easier.
Then I noticed that he hadn't actually used the right washers to connect the tank bolts. The ones he used were too small, and had actually cut right through the rubber washers underneath when I had tightened them up in my efforts to stop the leak the night before. I wondered about this, too, but the plumber had bought a new gasket and tank bolt set when he came back to "fix" the original problem.
Anyway, I got the first toilet out, and started installing the new one. It took me about an hour, start to finish. It doesn't leak.
It does make me wonder, however, whether the "old" toilet has a casting flaw at all, or whether the plumber was just rushed because it was such a little job, and he had other things he needed to get to. I do know that he didn't follow the instructions that came with the toilet, which called for TWO sets of washers and nuts on the tank bolts (which makes a lot of sense to me, actually), and for plastic clips and brass washers on the floor bolts...
Anyway, the bathroom is officially done. I don't have any pictures right now, because I installed the flooring transition piece this morning and the door is still block with boxes...
I'm just kidding. Here:
Maybe one more shelf or something, just above the toilet there? No hurry to get that, though - I'm still saying it's done.
That's not all we've done this weekend, however. We had bought a couple of new lights to replace the ugly-ass pieces of shit that hang on the front of the house, on either side of the garage door. These things:
Yeah, there are actually three of them, but we only got two lights - another lurks outside the front door, but its days are also numbered. Anyway, the War Department actually started this project herself, but it quickly became a joint effort - and a whole day affair, at that.
The trouble started when she took the first light off the wall and found this:
In case you were wondering, that is not up to code. Technically, it's not really AGAINST code either, if only because the people who came up with the electrical code never in their wildest dreams imagined someone would be so goddamned stupid as to install a light on an OUTSIDE wall like that.
Let's review, shall we?
- piece of 3/8ths plywood carefully cut to form a precise (and flammable!) mounting bracket? Check.
- bracket from another light fixture fastened haphazardly to the plywood mount? Check.
- duct tape AND electrical tape? Check.
- no sign whatsoever of any caulking or weatherproofing? Check.
- two different sized marrettes? Check.
- a flat-head, a Philips, and two different-sized Robertson screws all used in the same application? Check - and a big-ass nail, to boot.
Yeah, this couldn't have been more messed up if he tried. Oh, wait - it totally was. No, I'm not kidding. It gets worse.
The light closest to the electrical panel. was mounted in a proper "pancake" box - not ideal, but probably up to code at the time the house was built. It seems, however, that someone wanted to add the second carriage light on the other side of the door sometime after the house was built. To do this, they made a hole in the drywall and fed in their electrical wire (what does it say about us that we were actually quite happy to see that it wasn't speaker wire?), and then poked it through the junction box. So far so good, but then they ran it across the wall at the front of the garage, and fed it THROUGH a couple of holes in the brackets for the garage door. Yes, METAL brackets. That, as we say in the trade, is double-plus ungood.
Anyway, it took us another trip to Home Depot, and a full afternoon of cutting, swearing, wiring, and caulking, but we now have two very nice coach lights on either side of the garage door; here's one of them:
The story, of course, does not end there. But to tell it properly, we need to turn this over to
This Week In Mayonnaise
I mentioned above that the person or persons who installed the light had cut a little hole in the drywall to access the back of the first light so they could tie in the electrical wire. Well, this is what it looked like after they had patched it (I propped the piece I cut out back in the hole so you could see - it's not staying there):
That's not the best part, though. Oh no, the best part is what they stuffed the hole with so they'd have something to backfill the mayonnaise against:
Mmm.... flammable!
Anyway, it's getting late, even with the time change, and I've got some wine to finish. Before I go, though, I'd like to leave you with a little bonus.
Remember way back when, I spent an entire post waxing on and on about how you really start to learn about the previous owner of a house, even when you don't want to know?
Well, something arrived in the mail the other day, addressed to Frank, that explains SO MUCH. It's a magazine - more of a catalog, really. It's called Bits and Pieces and... well, how about you just take a look at the cover, and see what they're selling:
Oh yeah. Me - ow, baby.
4 comments:
If you wanted to give Frank the benefit of the doubt (unlikely you'd want to, but leave me with the lead in to my story, will you?) - well, in our last place, we received a LOT of magazines, addressed to the previous tenant. There were at least a half dozen subscriptions: Chatelaine, Mcleans, Car and Driver, Ms, People, and others. Turns out one of his mates got one of those "zillions of subscriptions for the price of one" offers - and signed his buddy up for them.
Sometimes I womder if that was why he moved.
They were still arriving after we moved out.
Ahahhaaha! The word verification for the last post was senile! Perfect for the mayonnaise man.
I COULD give Frank the benefit of the doubt... except for the fact that there are several items in the catalog that are dead ringers for things he left behind (and we've since thrown out).
Funny, whenever I have to raid my container of miscellaneous screws to put something together I make a concerted effort to at least make them the same screw head type thingamagig...for fear that the next person is going to tar and feather me with the same brush as Frank.
Bathroom looks awesome by the way.
- Heather
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