Lessons of the Toilet Bowl

Bagel turned 5 today, but his party had to be cancelled because he was sick. I was disappointed to not be able to use all the preparations I'd done for the party, but there was an upside: I now had a whole day with which to work on the toilet.

The kids' bathroom stunk. The wax ring needed to be replaced. Now I've replaced a wax ring before, so I knew how to do it. What I didn't know was that they really, really mean those warnings about not tightening down the bolts too tight lest you crack the porcelain on the toilet base. I honestly had no idea that porcelain was that fragile, or that weak little me (famous for my weak-wristed not-tightening-enough) was capable of tightening down a bolt so that it would break the substrate. But there you go, I busted my toilet while fixing it.

FH The Bargain King found a clearance toilet base that was the right brand and the exact same footprint as our old one, so he brought it home and saved my bacon. Then I got it put in and this time I did not tighten the bolts too much. And so now the toilet in the kids' bathroom doesn't stink any more. The bathroom still stinks a bit because (1) we have pee sprinklers boys and (2) having to take down and replace the entire toilet twice left me with not enough time to clean the rest of the bathroom. But at least the wax ring is done, so we're not leaking raw sewage.