The Bathroom Project Part 3 - Getting up to half a bathroom

Following the last picture, mom grouted the floor and we let everything set for a week while everyone was out of town. This weekend, we were rearing and reading to get a usable bathroom at this end of the hall. We started Friday night hoping to quickly set the toilet before it was bed time. If you look at the last picture of the previous post, you may notice a white circular object sticking up out of the floor. This is called the flange, it's the part that connects the toilet to the drainage pipe. Or in plainer terms: it is the bridge that keeps your waste from leaking on it's way to the sewer.

Though I forgot to mention it, the previous flange that was in there, was cracked and had to be replaced. If the previous person had installed it correctly, this would have been no problem, but instead of screwing the flange to the floor, they glued it into the pipe. Meaning I had to take a hammer and chisel to that... nasty, nasty bridge and break it out piece. by. piece. I was, therefore, committed to installing it correctly and screwed it down nice and tight. See?



Only one problem. See those nice straight lines in the tile going from the bottom left to the top right? They needed to be touching the end of that bolt hole, not the middle. If you ever look under a flange, you'll see how there's a little plastic ridge that goes to just before the end of that bolt hole. It's purpose is to catch the bolt so that it does not twist as you try to tighten the nuts on top of the toilet. Oops. We press on. Long and very frustrating story short, the bolt turned sideways as we were attempting to secure the toilet and popped right out of the hole. Furthermore, for some reason the wax ring that sit on top of the flange to further insure no leakage was not smushed at all meaning that the toilet was not resting on the flange like it's supposed to. It was then that mom realized that the flange was supposed to be at floor height, not sunken in as you see it.

Though we called it quits for the night, we did, quiet fortunately, already have the solution for this, back when we were doing the backer boards almost 3 weeks ago, we had the foresight to buy an extension kit for just such an outcome. So it was that first thing Saturday morning, we installed the flange kit, and seated the toilet. Things were looking up until we found that after all that hard work, the toilet tank was cracked. Though we were at first worried that this meant we were going to have to buy a whole new toilet, a nice employee at Lowe's helped us find a replacement for just the toilet tank! Replacing the old, cracked tank for the new (shorter) tank was a simple job and we finally had a working toilet... albeit no sink or door at this point.


The installation of the vanity bottom went well. We decided to caulk behind it so water wouldn't be able to seep into the walls and discovered that we only had gray caulk. Fortunately this area is completely covered by the vanity so we caulked it gray and pressed on. At this point mom left to go see my 3 day old niece, Alyssa Faith Bennett, and left me to install the sink and vanity top.

It was a largely easy affair. The only hold up was on of the water lines that went from the pipe to the faucet could no longer reach since the new vanity is about 4-6 inches higher than the old one. This also meant that the drain pipe from the sink did not reach to the drain pipe going into the wall. One last quick Lowe's run (it's an exit from our house) allowed me to purchase the solutions to both these problems, and once mom got back we were able to silicone glue the vanity top to the bottom. Here's the result:



I was also able to replace the light, but I didn't bother taking a picture of that. So what's left you ask?

1) Caulk the tub
2) Caulk the space where the wall meets the floor
3) Put on base boards
4) Put up shower curtain
5) Put up towel holders
6) Any other little things my sister wants to do that I am unaware of.

We've done a really nice job so far. The one and only draw back I'm seeing right now is that it's a much louder bathroom now. That make things a little embarrassing for the people trying to use it!

The Bathroom Project Part 3 - Getting up to half a bathroom