After Sly and I moved in and got most of our things unpacked, and after he tiled the shower so we could use it, we got down to the business of trying to finish more of the bathroom. As it was, it had a workable (but not yet finished) shower/tub, a sink with no medicine cabinet, and a beautiful tile floor, but the room still had to be painted, and there was a big hole in the floor instead of a toilet.
The first thing we had to do before installing the toilet was finish the wall that the toilet would sit on. I didn’t want to be in the position of having to paint around the toilet, so we decided to do the wall first. The wall that was there was damaged because of our bathroom demo (that is where one of the walls we pulled out intersected the original walls of the room). Thus, we needed to put in new drywall. My dad went out and bought some, and he said we should just go right over the wall material that was there, instead of pulling out the plaster and lathe. My dad, however, took a little too long to put up the drywall for Sly’s taste, so Sly and his dad put up drywall the day they installed the bathroom sink. The only problem was that they used drywall nails instead of screws, so they weren’t counter-sunk, and they couldn’t find the studs because the plaster threw off the stud-finder, so the drywall wasn’t entirely secure in spots. My dad advised me not to compound the wall yet. He said that the nails would pop out over time because they weren’t in a stud, so I waited for him to come over and help secure the drywall.
After a week or so, he came over, and we worked on finding the studs for the drywall screws. It was a trial and error process, but we finally found them and screwed the drywall to them. Then we pulled out the nails and compounded the nail/screw holes and the corners where the drywall met the ceiling and other wall. Now, my dad is an expert compounder. If he has the time to work at his own pace, he can compound a damaged wall so that you’d never know it had been damaged. His work is impressive. Since he was there, he decided to impart his knowledge to me, since I’d only ever compounded nail holes before. He showed me how to tape the corners and apply the compound to the corners. That way, I’d learn a new skill, and he wouldn’t have to come back on successive days to apply the additional coats of compound needed.
As he instructed, I lightly sanded the compounded areas the next day and applied a second coat. Then I waited another 24 hours for it to dry before I sanded it again (lightly), wiped off the walls with a barely damp sponge (to remove the compound dust), and then prepped the wall for painting. Sly had made an appointment for a plumber to come out and put in our toilet, so I had to move fast on getting the wall painted before then. And I did paint the wall, and the other walls and ceiling, as well as the trim. With the wall compounded and painted, we were ready to go for the toilet to get installed.
The only problem was that the floor was a little bit raised compared to the existing toilet flange, since we had laid the new subfloor and tile over the existing wood floor. Plus, the old toilet flange was broken. If we hadn’t had these problems, we would have done the toilet ourselves, but we decided to call in a professional because we weren’t sure how tricky the raised floor and broken flange would make the toilet installation.
Sly got a number for a plumber from Ricklin’s, the local hardware store, a.k.a., the best hardware store ever. He made an appointment for the guy to come out around 8 a.m. to look at the bathroom and give us an estimate. Well, the guy didn’t show up until nearly 9:30 a.m., and he started off his visit by chastising me because there wasn’t a parking spot directly in front of our house. As if I control the parking availability on my block. I guess it was a real hardship for him to have to walk an extra 10 feet. Apparently, he did show up around 8 a.m. and left right away because he would have had to park a few houses down. It would have been nice of him to let me know, since I do have a life and have more to do than sit around and wait for a grumpy old Irishman with a pot belly to come over and yell at me about parking. Anyway, he went upstairs, took a look at our toilet and said, “Glacier Bay? [with disdain] Why didn’t you buy a Kohler?” Okaaay. First, we got an awesome toilet. It is a white elongated-bowl Glacier Bay high efficiency toilet with a WaterSense seal of approval (like Energy Star, only for water-using home fixtures). The whole toilet came in one box – bowl, tank, flushing mechanism, wax ring, etc. It uses far less water than the usual toilet when flushing (only 1.28 gallons per flush), and we are very proud of it. So I was offended. What business of his is it that we chose to buy an eco-friendly toilet instead of an expensive water-guzzling toilet? Argh.
Next, he looked at the toilet flange and said, “Oh, this is trouble.” Okay. So I asked him what he would have to do to correct the situation so that we could install the toilet without it leaking, and he said, “Oh, I’ll call your husband and tell him because you wouldn’t understand.” Then he booked out of the house as if I had leprosy or something. Seriously?! I was very annoyed when he left and called Slyt o tell him what had happened. Obviously, we weren’t going to hire the guy because a) he didn’t show up when he said he would, b) he was a complainer, and c) he’d managed to insult me more than once in a 5-minute visit. Sly planned to tell him that we weren’t hiring him when he called, only the guy never called. Guess he didn’t want to be bothered with us.
So we tried plan B. We found out from my parents that a plumber named Mark Scanlon had done work at the house when my great uncle was still alive. So we gave him a call. He came out, said that our flange was broken because someone had gotten “creative” with our plumbing and put the flange on an elbow piece of the toilet pipe (apparently a no-no). So he said we could either pull up the tiles around the toilet and do a bunch of work to redo the pipes, or he could put spacers in and some other stuff and have the toilet on in about an hour. So Sly told him we chose option B and we made an appointment for him to come out a few days later to install the toilet. Mark was true to his word. He sent out one of his guys, who showed up on time and had the toilet installed and working in 1 hour. And it only cost us $250. Wonderful.
And I love our new toilet. It has a quiet yet powerful flush, and the tank refills in about 20 seconds. It also looks really nice on the newly painted wall. I never thought I’d be so excited by a toilet.
Our toilet
Now, how do I get the manufacturer’s sticker off the toilet tank?
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LESSONS LEARNED: I can compound. If I can compound, anyone can compound. It just takes practice. Plus, the grumpy plumber sucks. Mark Scanlon is way better, and I highly recommend him if you live in the Narberth area and need plumbing work done. Finally, it pays to buy WaterSense toilets (and other water-using things that have a WaterSense seal) and Engergy Star appliances (which we plan to get). Saving the environment never looked so chic.
