Flush Like a Champion Today

For our second day of glorious homeownership, we had the privilege of removing and replacing some toilets. And by we, I mean our dollars and a nice plumber. You may recall that last night we had the water and gas turned on. We discovered on our walk through this morning that the upstairs toilet was leaking from the drain (or something equally gross - I may have had to go to my happy place for that discussion.) Our contractor who was there turned it off. Then the Kid (who never made it to school today... whoops!) had to go potty. In the black potty, since that was the only one that worked. I mean, I had been told that it worked. The Kid was terrified of this black potty. And I mean, why wouldn't you be? It's an enormous black maw opening up underneath you, full of God knows what germs and stuff and BLECH.

It didn't flush. The problem was with the kit inside and not the actual toilet, but I hated the toilet so much I didn't even want to repair the kit. The Mr. was kind enough to indulge me and had a plumber out within a few hours. (I am indulging him in his survey spending, so it all works out.) We are the proud new owners of a  Gerber Viper commode:

Why in the world you would want to name a toilet after a snake, I have no idea. It invites one to think, that's going to bite me in the a$$. The plumber had it on his truck so it wasn't like I selected such a thing, although its pristine whiteness does fill me with joy. The plumber and I discussed this unusual naming choice, and he tells me that the next model up is the Avalanche. The Avalanche. This does not create a pleasant mental image in my mind. Mr. Plumber says that they want people to know how aggressively they flush. They flush like CHAMPIONS. They flush so hard they are HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH. In your face!

So the limousine of toilets is now sitting in the middle of the office, awaiting its trip to the big dumpster in the sky. Go with God, disgusting filthy toilet.

So the even worse toilet upstairs has been removed and the water pipes cut down (or something? I am not a plumber.) Unsurprisingly, the pipes are original to the house and in terrible shape. The water damage on the dining room/kitchen wall may be due to pipe failure inside the wall in addition to the water leaking down from the upstairs bathroom. Despite this, the mold guy's perspective was that the wall is in fine shape and can be treated, sealed and painted. We will most likely end up replacing the pipes from the second floor to the basement. It isn't fun or cute or trendy, but it needs to be done and we want to do this right. This is our long term house and we are making long term decisions. We'll be discussing this with the bathroom guys and seeing how it affects our timelines. They said the mold remediation and the bathroom would take about three weeks to complete, but this is obviously going to push it back farther. We'll see what happens, I guess. 

In other news, the master bedroom was my project of the day (with some help from the invaluable Grandpa T). We got all the carpet out, most of the staples and tacks, and most everything from the walls. In our WTF? moment of the day, I encountered this: 

I removed about a gajillion of these nails today. Our theory is that they were trying to fix a squeak in the floor. The nails have no pattern, rhyme or reason and were put in OVER the carpet pad. Seriously? All in all, the floors are not in bad shape but this particular area of damage is going to require some attention. When they installed the carpet they took the shoe molding from the existing baseboards and moved it up about two inches. We'll need to remove it and reinstall it in the original position. Knowing that has to be done puts another point in the 'paint trim' column for me, although so far I'm about 55% in favor of leaving them stained. That's a debate for another post, for sure. So now we have a room that looks like this: 

Not too shabby for a couple of hours work. The plan is to do the other bedrooms tomorrow and Friday so that we are ready for the bathroom demo Saturday morning, followed by the carpet removal on the landing, stairs, living and dining rooms. (While the Mr. leads a crew taking out all the basement paneling, ceiling and extra walls). I did get the dumpster ordered and if all goes as planned on Saturday we should have the mold guys in next week to get started. 

We had a showing on our other house tonight, so we had a picnic in the driveway. We could be doing a lot worse.