Plumbing 101

In December 1994, my wife and I bought a 40 year old house. Now, as with most older houses, this one needed repairs and painting, and many other things done to it. There were several things that particularly irritated my wife, including the tile on the bathroom floor. While I insisted on spending time on the important repairs in the house, she set about removing the tile. This went smoothly and all was removed except the tile directly under the toilet; The remaining tiles were left to me.

I determined it would be a simple matter of removing the toilet, replacing the tile, inserting a new wax seal, and replacing the toilet. O foolish estimate!

I started on the morning of December 23. By the afternoon of December 24, the staff at the local hardware store would laugh each time I entered the store. I had visited the store at least 4 times and spent $50 replacing every imaginable piece of plumbing associated with the toilet, including the insides of the tank, the flexible tubing between the valve and the toilet tank, the valve, the section of pipe between the valve and the pipe inside the wall, and of course, the wax seal.