This Space for Rent

Toilet installation day

Our bathroom, updated to the current century with a low-flow toilet instead of the old 10 gpf one

Taking a break because of exhaustion; the old toilet was, not surprisingly, not completely compatible with modern toilet hardware, and to add insult to injury it had 104 years of filth caked over the hardware (the carriage bolts that held the captive flange to the bowl were completely corroded except for a whisker-thin iron core; the 2" steel pipe connecting the tank to the bowl had corroded to paper thinness, which was good because the clampy things connecting it to the bowl and tank were rusted into immobility, and the captive flange had seized to the sewage pipe, so I had to work a putty knife around it it a few times before I cracked enough of the corrosion so I could rotate the flange and thread new carriage bolts through two unused holes) which I needed to chip away so I could unbolt the old bowl and put it to one side before cleaning the floor and installing the new one.

…. after 3 trips to the hardware store for bits and bobs of hardware, including a new feed line because the old one (which was not, thankfully, original to the house) had brittled to the point where it stopped being watertight when I unscrewed it from the old tank.

The toilet seat, which we were thinking of moving over from the old toilet, is still stubbornly attached to the old bowl and I may have to use a sledgehammer to free it tomorrow morning. So the floor will remain grubby (it’s actually been cleaned, but there was a lot of debris to clean up) until then, and we’ll just have to perch birdlike on the edge of the bowl when we need to use the facilities.

(And, man, this low flow toilet is wonderful; when we flush, there’s this little gurgle and swoosh and all of the waste is sucked away instead of the old routine of leaning on the flush lever until the water decides that it really wants to head down the drain instead of swirling around and climbing higher.)