That is all.

Our water has been turned on (a while ago, actually) and the water line from the meter to the 1st floor master (ha!) bathroom has been vetted, so it's time to replace the toilet.

NOTE: this how-to is tongue-in-cheek.  Although it covers the steps I followed to install this toilet, I certainly don't suggest that anyone else take my advice on this or any other home repair project; in fact, please don't emulate me at all.  Ever.  For a sensible step-by-step guide to replacing a toilet please visit This Old House, where they are all about safety, following directions, the proper tools, and not drinking on the job.

Step One:

Suit up in your best HazMat gear and remove the three old, waste-encrusted toilets that came with the house. Throw them into a rented dumpster and dance a dance of sweet liberation.

Step Two:

Get two free toilets from a Very Nice Man on Craigslist.  Drive alll the way out to Pontiac to pick them up, because the cost of gas out to Pontiac and back is worth two free toilets.

Since you aren't ready to install them yet, put the toilets in a really inconvenient spot in the middle of the first floor dining room.

Watch as they gather plaster dust and random construction materials for months.

Think about those crystal-growing kits from grade school: the ones that stank up the classroom until it smelled like you were downwind from an oil refinery and didn't do much for half the quarter, until suddenly five students' projects would explode into colorful crystals while the rest of the class looked on in bitter envy.

Eventually, this will be a colorful explosion of truly epic stink.

Step Three:

Prepare the old toilet hole.

The old toilet hole has a real name: it's called the soil pipe.  This is foul nomenclature, even for plumbing; from here on out, Craphouse Girl is going to refer to the soil pipe as the old toilet hole.

The old toilet hole has a metal lip: the closet flange.

The nastiness which is encrusted all around the closet flange is scummy leftover wax from the old toilet.   Get a plastic paint scraper and remove as much of that wax as you can.

After five minutes or so, you'll start to feel like the wax removal is a never-ending job.

A minute or two after that, some stray gases from years ago will finally drift up through the old toilet hole.  Go ahead and quit at that point; you've probably scraped away enough wax by now.

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Q: What happened to all of the awesome Craphouse Content?

A: Okay, here's the thing.  The previous 'blog' wasn't exactly a blog; it was a series of HTML pages that were half-coded in CSS and PHP - but I never got around to coding a full CSS shell for them.  Since I didn't have a CSS shell I had to copy and build each page, rather than just typing my content into a handy-dandy blogging interface.  This made blogging just another tedious Craphouse chore, instead of the exciting journey of communication that it is meant to be.

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Please note: this post has been migrated over from another of my blogs.  Eventually, the CHC blog will host all of my Detroit stuff along with all of my Craphouse stuff.  Menace & Whimsy will still have most of the writing stuff, while the Artsy Fartsy category here will have any other arts-related posts.

I tried to set the post date of this post to the original post date of 8/31/08, but b2evolution sez that's cheating.  I was hoping this would maintain a warm, Dear-Diary feel on this blog in spite of all the swears but I suppose it was not to be.

So: originally posted at At Your Door on 8/31/08 ~

I should have added a Stupid Shit category.

…there: done.

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