Take Back That Flange, Sir
Jeeesus Chriiist am I still in that bathroom? Oh, no, please, don't go on. But I have to tell you about the toilet flange. Please no, please no don't. Well, I ripped out half the floor down to the joists but there weren't enough joists present so I scabbed some treated 2X6s onto the existing hard as a rock pine 2X10s and did some boxing around the waste pipe (which in some future will piss off a plumber) so I could put in the "for rent" ad--toilet will support a hippopotamus-- and one support here and another there and one diagonal because I had to and then cut some treated three quarter inch plywood and drilled holes for the supply pipes and roto-zipped one around the flange and then added another layer of three quarter inch plywood, same drilling and roto-zipping and when that was done I took a breath and attended to the closet and got it up to level, I mean not really level because that would require tearing the house down and starting over, but level to the rest of it anyway. This whole bathroom is only 6X8, including the closet and I am only working, as far as this floor reconstruction part is concerned, in half of that space. And I've been at it for almost 6 days. What? No, I'm not smoking pot. I'm just flummoxed some of the time. So today I was thinking about laying down the final layer, some quarter inch oak plywood for the linoleum to go on top of, when I noticed the toilet flange was sticking up too high. Like way too high but I don't trust my eyes (yes I do) so I brought the toilet in from the kitchen and set it on top of the flange and no fucking way will this work. I had been online some days ago reading about flanges so I took a cold chisel to the oakum and beat the flange with a hammer and got it to break off. Then I went to the home improvement store and found a new cast iron flange that purportedly will go on without an oakum process (which I think is a joint packing material over which you pour molten lead) and it damn well better work because it cost 42 dollars. The next most expensive flange I saw was 18 dollars but it would not suit my needs. Oh I love a good flange story. Don't you?. I bought a cheap pedestal sink for 36 dollars because the sink I took out was crap and the two back up sinks out here in the junk pile that I considered using were, upon closer inspection, broken. And a faucet and some closet bolts. And another sheet of plywood because now, without the flange, I would be able to snug up to the waste pipe itself and have the flange rest over the floor, which is proper. And I got a sheet of green sheetrock because I need to do some of that too, after this floor. And some baseboard and some shoe molding.
In answer to your question what am I doing tonight?...pretty much this. I've never been one for Friday nights. Assuming it is in fact, Friday night.
And then I took a pair of channel locks and broke off in pieces the lip of the cast iron waste pipe until it was level with the floor. Hell, I should probably take that flange back and get a proper one and some oakum, and a torch, you know what I'm saying?
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