Uprooted Toilet

Uprooted Toilet
Originally uploaded by Rozanne.

About a week ago, I revealed that B and I aren't too handy and that we really don't know an adz from a hole in the ground. And now look! Our toilet is in the bathtub, a few pages of the Oregonian are stuffed into the toilet socket, three layers of vinyl flooring dating back to the 1940s have been peeled off, and the baseboards have been pried from the wall.

We had nothing to do with creating this unholy mess. We paid someone to do it. You see, about a month ago, we started noticing that the flooring around the toilet was beginning to feel a bit, well, corrugated. In true B and Rozanne fashion, we ignored it for about a week. "Hasn't it always been sort of ripply like that?" B wanted to know. I knew better, but clung to the ridiculous hope that maybe the problem would self-correct. It got worse. Even a couple of home-repair simpletons like ourselves realized that something was leaking and that we needed to get something done about it ASAP.

However, because of the holidays, the general uncertainty of the contractor's schedule, and several flake-out moments on his part, he wasn't able to rip apart the bathroom until Friday. There is some good news:

• We have another bathroom (with a shower), so we haven't had to resort to sponge baths, buckets, the backyard, or the sad bar around the corner where people drink Bloody Marys and play video poker at 10:00 AM.
• The asbestos test of the sparkly pink (gack!) circa 1951 flooring a few layers down came back negative for asbestos, which means we don't have to pay an additional $400 to an asbestos-abatement company.
• The contractor claims that the bathroom will be finished by the end of the day Monday or, at the latest, Tuesday.
• This is the first thing that's gone wrong with the house since we bought it at the end of 2001. Not too bad a record.

There's a bit of bad(ish) news as well:

• We will have paid hundreds of dollars to get this problem fixed and the bathroom will look essentially the same--not vastly improved.*
• The contractor hasn't yet determined the nature of the leak. It may have been the toilet in which case we'll have to go toilet shopping. I don't know anything about toilets (except how to use them), and much as I like the idea of conserving water, I don't want to get one of those feeble-flush toilets that can't choke down more than two squares of toilet paper. What good is a water-conserving toilet if you have to flush it three times? I also don't want one of those weird ovular toilets with a seat the size and shape of a turkey-roasting pan.
• I'm going to have to paint the new baseboards and, in all likelihood, the whole bathroom. True, it's the smallest room in the house, but I spent almost all of last February painting our spare bedroom--several times--because of a Mr. Bean-like misadventure with faux finishes** and I'm still recovering. Also, I'll have to forego work on the afghan, which does not please me.

By the way, my apologies to all nonhomeowners about these recent posts about upholstery and yanked-out toilets. I was a renter for many years, and I found nothing more tedious than listening to the minutiae of someone's DIY project or decor plans. I now fully understand how people can get obsessed with that stuff. There's a lot to be said for not acquiring a big material possession like a house. It reshuffles your priorities, and perhaps not for the better.

*Actually, I quite like the bathroom. It's just that for all that money, I'd like to see a tangible difference, you know? Also, the bathroom is not nearly as squalid as it looks in the photo. The tile in the shower is not the depressing, orphanage-green color it appears to be, but a more upbeat, period-appropriate seafoamish color.

**Perhaps I'll write an entry about that at some point. At the very least, I should post some photos of how terribly wrong it went. They're quite amusing.