Happiness is a Working Toilet

For Jean, who requested (demanded) a new post.

It took us one year and three hours to get our antique toilet in the basement working again. I'm not sure why some house projects manage to get done immediately, while others languish for months on end. Our Standard Low Tank Toilet project dragged on forever.

A nifty relic from our house's early origins, the toilet sits in a corner of the basement in its own little room. It's legendary on our block. At the block party, several neighbors laughingly asked about it. The previous resident had hosted a movie night in the basement for the dads on the block, and everyone remembered the "scary toilet." And I have to admit, it was a bit of a scary little room--dark, spider-infested--and the toilet was pretty unsanitary-looking, with an ancient wooden seat that had hosted untold generations of residents. *Shudder*

We took the toilet apart, I'm embarrassed to admit, a year ago this week with the intention of evaluating its functionality and giving it a thorough cleaning. All gun ho, we tore into it, deeming it repairable.

And then it sat there in pieces. For months on end, we'd trip over the box of parts, cursing it and promising to get to it "this week." We bought a nifty new toilet seat back in April or so, and made a trip out to the amazing Clark Devon Hardware in June for replacement parts. I even proclaimed on the blog then that we'd have the toilet working in "a day or two." Ha! A few months ago, we tore out the old drywall, got rid of the spiders, and scrubbed the room down with disinfectant.


But still the tank parts sat in a box, gathering dust.

Other house projects got in the way over the year, more pressing matters like leaky roofs, leaky basements, broken heating systems, and random tenant issues.

But finally, finally, we found time to work on it this month. And when we did, it took all of three hours to put the toilet back together again. I cleaned the heck out of the porcelain, preserving the old Standard label, and polished the metal bits:

Ted did the actual repair and re-assembly. DEA Bathroom Machineries was very helpful for this; they have an online repair guide for old toilets, with illustrations. This is what the system more or less looks like: Tank Diagram.

Anyway, one of these days (*cough, cough* years) we'll finish this room with tile and fresh drywall. But for now, the toilet itself is very clean and very usable--even if the only wall we have to block the view at present is a temporary folding one, since I tore the old one out.

Please enjoy the following video, which is music to my ears. The toilet repair project has been one of the most satisfying of all. It's so much nicer having to walk only ten feet from my office, rather than down the length of the basement, up the stairs, and into the unit above.



Now, instead of our galvanized shop sink, we just need a vintage Standard sink to match! We had found one in an alley nearby, but it wasn't quite what we were looking for, and it found a new home with Denise at The Bungalow Chronicles. Be sure to visit her and check out the installation!

Barack Obama Dragon Sculpture

This has got to be the weirdest Obama memorabilia I've come across yet. A Design Toscano exclusive, it features Obama as a dragon. (The company is known for its dragon and gargoyle figures.) The one they have of McCain is even creepier...

Facebook

I may be a bit behind the curve, but I finally got around to joining Facebook. I don't know why I haven't before; it seems a fair number of friends and acquaintances are already on it--and a quick check revealed some of our past and present tenants are too. It's slightly addictive. I've already looked up friends from grade school and crushes I had throughout high school just to see who's out there and what they're up to now. Ted joined recently as well, and has made contact with people he hasn't seen in 20 years.

Anyway, you can find us both on the Housebloggers circle, started by Jocelyn at Chicago Two-Flat. Let us know if you're on Facebook too!

Oh, and looky! We have our own bit of summer sunshine in the dining room. Our tangerine tree, one of four miniature citrus trees I got last spring, has presented us with fruit. It's hard to believe it's been 10 below zero this week.

Home Improvement Resolutions for January 2009

We decided not to make a list of New Year's Home Improvement Resolutions for 2009. Our list of uncompleted projects at the end of 2008 was just too depressing. Instead, we're going to do a month-by-month list of goals that we might reasonably be able to accomplish in a 30-day period. This is what we want to accomplish for January, and where we're at now that it's the middle of the month:

1. Remove drywall and shelves in our "electrical room" and clean room [Done]

This room was a disaster. I forgot to get a picture of what it looked like before I started. Every inch of space was cluttered with stuff [read: junk] left behind by the previous owners, including 30 odd cans of old paint now waiting in the garage to be hauled down to the recycling center. [Note to self: On next home purchase, make sure we have it in writing that the seller will have all of their possessions removed; don't just believe it when they say they will.] Above is a picture of some of the bounty I dragged out into the laundry room. This is maybe a fifth of what was in there.

Here's the closest thing I have for a before picture; the window in back had been replaced last month, and then replaced again a few weeks later after this picture was taken when it developed a stress crack [thank you, Scientific Window, for your 20-year guarantee]. The electrical room is so named because that's where our service boxes are for both units, which are off to the right in the photo. These were "upgraded" in 1970, based on a receipt we found in the basement. Ted had already removed the ceiling board in this room, and I was about to remove the shelves and wallboard, behind which were literally hundreds of spider egg sacs and a quarter-inch of coal dust.

After (at right): I think it took about six or seven hours total to remove and break down the wall board, clean every surface of coal dust, scrub down the floor, haul the junk out to the garage, haul our old metal shelves in, and stock the room with supplies--both ours and the previous owners--we think we might actually need. I know, I know, it still looks like a grotty basement room to the untrained eye, but to me it's a haven of order and [semi] cleanliness. Behind the wallboard (dated 1926) was the wood-slatted wall shared with the storage room. You can follow that link to see what the boards look like.

Also in the electrical room, we found the fireplace insert for the second-floor unit. Okay, we knew it was there, but it was pretty filthy and covered in spider egg sacks. This was the first real opportunity I had to drag it out and get a good look at it. Here it is with most of the dirt knocked off of it.

It needs to be rewired and derusted, but it's pretty cool. On the underside of the logs are two lightbulbs, one red and one whitish-yellow, to simulate that warm fireplace glow. At present, the tenants upstairs are using a modern light-only fireplace insert. I have no idea if this restoration project will make it to my list of things to get done this year or not.

2. Get the rest of our possessions out of Mom's other house so the new tenants can settle in. [Done]

We did manage to do this, but an unexpected flood in the basement kept us over there more often than we planned.

Okay, so those are the only things we've accomplished on the list so far. Here are the rest of the goals for January 2009.

3. Install new light on back porch

This is for the landing leading to the upstairs porch. At present, it's a bare bulb.


4. Finally finish cleaning and reassembling the 1920s toilet in the basement that we took apart a year ago and bought replacement parts for in June.

Seriously, I'm sick of tripping over the pieces, and we really need another working toilet.

5. Finish removing grotty old ceiling board in both the mechanical rooms, and demo the wall inbetween them.

Two boilers, two water heaters, two rooms to house them. We refer to these rooms as the Mechanical Room and the Tool Room, the latter so named because that's where all our tool chests and assorted fix-it gear have ended up. And the wall separating these rooms? You can hardly call it that, it doesn't even reach the ground, but sort of hovers over the floor drain.

6. Install new door to Ted's office, which currently does not have one.

We found a door at Menards to match the five-panel doors we have downstairs already. It's sitting on its side, still in its packaging crate. We just need to find age-appropriate hardware. This does not mean that the door will be stained and finished, but it will be at least be hanging in place until we can get it finished.

7. This is on Mom's list, to select a replacement sink and toilet for the first floor unit's bathroom.

After a year of using a bucket of water to make sure everything flushes down properly, it's time. It's strange how normal that act has actually become. The ridiculousness of it only crosses my mind when I have to explain the procedure to guests.

Alrighty, that's it. The pressure is on! Only two weeks to the end of the month. Any bets if we'll get it all done?