Happy 2011 Everyone! Caitlin had the week between christmas and new years off (since her work closes for that week, sweet huh?) I took off that week as well so I could work on some home projects. The big one I wanted to tackle was to update our basement half bath to make it look newer/better than one from the mid-80's.The old bathroom down there was rough (as you can see at below). The toilet would barely flush water, and routinely got clogged at the drop of a hat. The mirror was the old school 80's style with the plain mirror attached to the wall with the plastic elbow brackets and a really really old light with a frosted glass cover that was impossible to get any real light out of. But the worst part of the bathroom was the floor. It was some disgusting linoleum/vinyl tile that looked horrible and was a weird pinkish/off white color with roses in the middle of each tile. Ick.
In anticipation of my week working on updating the bathroom, our friend Kirk came over a couple weeks ago and helped me put in a ceiling fan (how does a bathroom not have an exhaust fan?!) and run some wiring to put in a new power outlet near the sink, since the old bathroom only had an outlet on the light fixture.So we had a good christmas. I relaxed christmas weekend in anticipation of working on this project. Then on Monday, I ripped out the toilet, the vanity and sink, the mirror off the wall and pried up all the crappy vinyl tiles. Tuesday I layed down a nice porcelain tile and Wednesday I grouted. Thursday I patched all the holes in the walls and cut floorboards and quarter rounds. Then Friday and Saturday I painted the walls and ceiling, twice. Then all the fun began.
Then I put in our new pedestal sink and faucet combo, which clears up so much space in the bathroom without having the whole big vanity. The pedestal sink went in fairly easily, I had a little leak in the drain because I initially didn't realize that the drain vent was 1 1/4" and the p trap was 1 1/2", but that was quickly fixed by swapping the right plastic washer in the pvc fitting.
Then the real fun began. It was now about 12:30 on Sunday afternoon, and I wanted to try to finish everything in time to watch the Seahawks game at 8:15, and all I had left was the toilet and some other minor fittings. Man, whoever designed the toilet attachment system is an idiot.
If you don't know, a toilet is attached to a plastic ring (called a closet ring) where the waste pipe meets the floor. There's to little slots to stick bolts with a rectangular head on them. You put the wax seal/funnel thing on the bottom of the toilet and drop it down onto the waste vent with the bolts going through the holes in the bottom of the toilet. However, in the kit that you buy at home depot, the bolts just sit there, and when you try to tighten the nut onto them, the bolts spin around and eventually come out of their little grooves in the closet ring. Ooops.
So, it also turns out that our closet ring was cracked right where the bolt should go, and in my attempt to tighten the bolts, pretty much destroyed one half of the closet ring. Double oops. Luckily I watch a lot of HGTV these days and I know you can go to home depot and buy a "super ring" that will fix that without having to call a plumber. So I bought one of those, anchored it through the tile into the concrete subfloor and finally got the toilet attached by tightening an extra pair of nuts onto the bolts so they were basically attached to the closet ring and wouldn't turn when I tried to tighten the toilet bolt on. After that, I put the tank and seat on the toilet, connected the water supply and caulked around the bottom.After that, I just had to hang the mirror, the wall art I bought and attach the toilet paper holder and towel ring. Ta-da, all done, with 45 minutes to spare (and about 5 trips to Lowe's on Sunday. . . blerg). What do you guys think? Good job by the Renovation Bear?
