I bought quite a cheap house years ago and among its sizable collection of faults and features is the toilet.
It and the bathroom had terrible 1980s styled linoleum flooring, which I’m not super worried about but in the toilet it kinda smelled.
I’d clean it, various products, never really went away. Eventually it was decided to see what was under it…turned out to be tiles. Gross tiles, but with gross grout but solid win.
Time passes.
Smell eventually comes back. Cleaning and bleaching has minimal effect. I suspect the problem is actually under the bowl as its a fairly halfassed install, tiles go under it, but not entirely, there is a gap in places. Its not sewage, but possibly any time its been mopped liquid might collect im not sure.
A few weeks ago I had some spare time and decided to tackle it and over a hour or so carefully removed a few rows of tiles.
I wasted some time here but it wasn’t immediately obvious what was under them. The smell however was horrible, it confirmed that it needed to be done, so I persisted, eventually I confirmed that the tiles were on a concrete sheet, and then nailed to the floor and I started working faster and got them all out apart from the ones supporting the toilet.
My plan was to prep the floor as much as possible, pull the toilet out, and wherever was under it. Possibly I’d make a spacer to put back under while thinking about it.
Decision is to either tile or sand and stain. Either way the floorboards need to be prepped. So obviously I put the now dissembled toilet in the kitchen, in a inflatable wading pool. Why? Because it needs to be installed/removed several times.
I clean pull nails and eventually use a angle grinder in places to get rusted/broken ones down to level after ripping up a few too many sanding pads.
Over a few days a lot of cleaning and sanding the smell goes away.
Side story: The first time I emptied the sander, I did in in my back yard, I could hear my neighbours having a bbq, emptied the dustcatcher which smelled horriffic, and watched the cloud of piss mould ghosts make an almost comical direct line over the fence. I went back inside very quietly.
Next the decision was made to try and stain the floorboards, can always tile over the top if it doesn’t work out and at the same time, why not upgrade the toilet, because its the most obvious time. And why not make things more complicated and costly!
Order placed for one of those ones with a sink and tap built into it. So when the flush button is pressed, the water goes through the tap, into the sink and falls into the tank, rather than just into the tank. $900.
Spent a few days while waiting for it painting and sanding, sanding and painting, shitting in a bucket occasionally or saving it for work. Toilet arrives. Toilet wont fucking fit. I want to cry.
Run down to bunnings, buy an adapter. Cut it to size. Bucket some water in as the tank isn’t installed yet. I cant get it to stop leaking and I cant install the tank anyway due to the placement of the supply tap which is 30-40 years old and I cant change.
So I give up. Get a plumber. Pay them what they want I know when I’m beaten.
Plumber come out the next day while i’m at work. Absolutely struggles. Took two of them 4 hours to install this thing (Which sort of makes me feel better), I get home to look at it.
Installed. Looks nice. Neater that I would have managed. However the floor is wet. It was actually leaking in three places. The pan conector where it went into the wall, same problem I had, the tank when it connected to the bowl…as they didnt do up either bolt properly, and where the new supply valve connected to the supply hose.
I tried six times to get the hose and valve to seat properly, over probably a hour, each time having to turn the mains off and dump pressure from other taps before removing their new valve entirely and replacing it myself.
Sheepish plumber returned the next day and swapped it out for a third tap. When asked about the pan leak, they flushed a few times and pointed out it seems to have stopped also but to call if not and they will try something else.
Does seem to be ok, but the just in case/visual indicator catch tray is still sitting there to this day.
