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Channel: Repairs – Our 1948 House
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Crappy situation?

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We had been ignoring our bathroom.  It worked, even if it was really truly ugly and in serious need of an update.  We were struggling enough to cope with chronically ill family members, visiting friends & family, day-to-day life, and disabilities to get too shook up about it.  The only thing we had done was purchase a stand alone rail system (this is what we use) to use around the toilet to assist sitting and standing independently in the bathroom.

Yes, it was that bad.  I was diagnosed with a couple more herniated disks in my back, which had me unable to do more than barely creep around and often requiring assistance to even get up from bed.  Other times, it was just too painful to lie down to sleep.  I’ve been forced to realize that back pain is very real and is NOT merely malingering.  (Yes, I was one of those people who was not very sympathetic about back pain.)  I have to laugh at myself, calling it karmic revenge on my unsympathetic outlook on other people’s pain.  We put in the rails so that I was not forced to ask for help to get on and off of the toilet, which I regard as the ultimate in humiliation.

Then, the internal workings of our original-to-1948 toilet began to fail.  It took it hours to refill after a flush, which was horribly inconvenient when it was just the two of us here, but if we had company, it became horribly annoying and embarrassing.  Hubby put in the new part (don’t ask me what it was!) finally, and it filled much quicker.

But a new problem appeared.  I was getting scalded in the shower.  I complained and got poo-poo’d.   I was overreacting when I blamed it on the toilet.  I bit my tongue.

Then the water bill came.  Trust me, the way to get a husband to listen is to hit him in the wallet, and the harder the hit, the more attention you can get!   Even so, he initially refused to listen to me.  He had to do a check for a water leak, since there was no way that that tiny bit of water it kept adding to the tank was causing a 300% increase in our water use.

I bit my tongue some more.

Finally, he had to admit, it was the toilet and it had to be fixed.  Off to Lowe’s he went to get the parts.

Have you ever bought parts for a toilet that is way past retirement age?  Especially when it was so old, the tank hung on the wall and was attached to the toilet seat via a chromed lead pipe?  One that was so old that it had a brick glued inside to reduce the amount of water used per flush?  We won’t talk about what a pain it was to clean, with that many years of use behind it, or how gross the interior of the tank was after decades of mystery chemicals being dumped into it.

They do not make parts to repair leaking valves in toilets that old.   After a couple of trips to and from Lowe’s, we had a discussion about whether using $20+ of parts on an ancient toilet was really a smart decision, since he didn’t know if he could rig it so that they MIGHT work.  I cast my vote to spend more than we could afford (big water bill too, remember) and simply buy a new toilet, which would undoubtedly save us enough to pay for itself in just a few months.

It was not a hard sell.  I think he was already questioning the wisdom of throwing money into that pretty gross old thing when it was dubious about whether or not it would work. He willingly returned the parts and then came home with the new toilet.  I should have told him to make sure to get a white toilet (I had chosen the model online) but I failed in that department.  We have an off white, biscuit is what I think they call it.  (This model toilet)

Keep in mind, hubby has heart disease & is a multiple heart attack survivor.  He also has degenerative disks in his back, among other things.  Hauling toilets around, new or ancient, was tough for him and he had to pace his work out.  He installed the toilet the next day (it was early evening by the time all of our original monkeying around was all done and we’d bought the toilet.)  It was not the thirty minute job that it would have been if we had been younger & healthier, nor if everything had gone right.

You do know that the rule is that when working on an old house, all jobs must have at least one thing go horribly wrong as you discover some ancient idiosyncrasy that will require regrouping, rethinking, and/or redoing.  If you are lucky, it’s just one more cheap part from the store.  If you aren’t lucky, it requires a professional and quick, especially if it involves the only toilet in the house.

I guess we were semi-lucky.  The old toilet did not have a flange, having been instead the victim of a lot of wax (hubby swore there were a couple of bee hives stuffed under it) and four screws attaching it to the floor.  They had also damaged the part immediately below the floor, which was made of lead.  (I forgot what he called it but it did have its own name) This part provides the link between the toilet flange and the stand pipe that the sewage is sent down. In our house, it is made of lead, and while it would probably have been good for another 75 years if it was undamaged, that was not the case.

So it was a trip to the store to buy the brass flange to mate toilet to damaged lead gizmo, which will work for now.  The bad news part is that when we go to replace the flooring in the bathroom (which means removing the toilet to go around the plumbing under it) we will have to replace that part, as he did not think it would last through having another reseating.

So, for our aging bodies,we have a chair height toilet.  It has been questioned whether that is a good idea in terms of resell value, but my response is quite simple.  We are remodeling the house to suit us, and sell/not sell is a distant point.  Even our granddaughter, who is tall for her six years, is fully capable of using a chair height toilet.

We have only had the toilet a few days now, but I do have things to say.  First of all, buy a jumbo wax ring unless you are installing in a relatively new bathroom.  Old houses can be downright weird, and old plumbing is even more peculiar, since codes often did not exist.  Other advice about ancient toilets?  Don’t wait to replace it.  You will spend a lot of extra money on flushes, and even if  you aren’t ready to redo the bathroom, the toilet can be removed for the new flooring and reseated then.  New toilets are quieter, more efficient,  and a LOT easier to clean.  The new toilet we bought can barely be heard outside the bathroom door, which means you aren’t announcing your need to flush to the entire world in your old house, especially when it is a small house with a single bathroom.  Our old toilet was incredibly noisy, actually whistling when the fill valve was going bad, but noisy with every flush.

The particular model we bought had rather mixed reviews.  We like it, and having it come with a seat was a blessing, as a new seat would have set us back $30-40.   Since our new toilet had not been budgeted out, that extra money would have hurt.   We aren’t lightweights, and none of us noticed the toilet seat being “flimsy”.  I don’t like its design though (underside has too many edges to keep it clean easily) and intend to replace it with a quiet closing version that is easier to clean, but we can postpone it to another month without so many hits to the budget.  It installed easily by one person, (although he is an experienced renovator, he is also handicapped by his health issues.)  It flushes well, and works almost like a dual flush toilet, with a super flush if you hold the handle down for a second or so.  So far, I would definitely recommend it for anyone who wanted to install an economical handicapped toilet.

Of course, I wanted the smart toilet that cleans itself, but a $400 price tag was enough deterrent to keep me from that option.  I do question whether special chemicals are required and what the additional cost would be, something that is important to those of us who are forced to an ever tighter budget.  I had also wanted a toilet without the external bumps and channels to catch and hold dirt, but had eliminated those too.  Most had a flimsy plastic “skirt” around the toilet and had a much-inflated price tag.  My goal, with each improvement we make, is to make this house easier for anyone to use, requiring minimal effort to clean, cook, and do the other daily items that we all must do.

So what is my next must-do improvement to the bathroom?  Ventilation!  We have my sister-in-law here for an extended visit, so we are experiencing what it is like to have a third person in the house for more than short term.  The bathroom is centrally located for everyone’s convenience, but that means we have wafting bathroom odors too, and I have a queasy stomach…and don’t want to know what is done in the bathroom.  There is also steam from showers, and we already battle heat and humidity, so we really need to get that out as quick as possible.

We had decided that the simplest solution that did not require hiring someone to do the duct installation would be to vent through the wall.  We have a very small bathroom, and a good portion of the only exterior wall is occupied by the lone window, unless we went for low.  Who wants a powered vent on the lower half of the bathroom?  That means we have 11″ above the window.  Lowe’s (the only big box store in town) has some models (not in stock, of course) that will work in terms of size, wall site, and noise.

Of course, installation is more than merely cutting a hole and sticking it in the wall.  It has to be wired, and a switch installed somewhere.  Personally, I think we can wire it off of the light wiring, with a switch on the wall, convenient for the toilet user to turn on.  Yes, that means that the light has to be on, but who sits in a dark bathroom?  Thankfully, hubby is experienced with wiring too, even if he is not a licensed electrician (local code allows homeowners to do their own wiring in their houses w/o any issues.)  It will be his call as to how to wire it in, as he knows what is safe or not safe to do, as well as which solution will require the least demolition of walls to get it into place.

Of course, taking out the ancient toilet caused cosmetic issues.  It turns out that our bathroom has Masonite stamped to look (okay, not a really good impression) like real tile.  The portion that the tank covered had never been painted.  While it is interesting in terms of history, it is NOT visually appealing.  There is also a really ugly and disgustingly rusted bracket to be wrestled off of the wall and disposed of.  I finally managed to remove the ancient and gross vinyl wallpaper that refused to budge by using a very small clothing steamer–it loosened like a dream then!

I had thought that the tile-look board had been applied at a later date, but it now looks as though it was builder material.  I also suspect that if we tear it off, we’re going to discover our studs, as in there was no dry wall used on that portion of the wall.  We had already (via an accident that punched a hole in the bedroom wall) discovered that the Formica panels used on the lower half of the kitchen was attached directly to the studs–another nightmare we have yet to face, but is getting closer!

So, hopefully, I’ll soon be posting news about the kitchen renovation next.  I’m so excited about that, despite over a year of it being postponed over and over.


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