- Bathroom Musings -
(Fourth Of July - Fall Out Boy)
Our story begins with a broken toilet seat. I'd love to regale you with a Moby Dick-esque tale about the battle that took place to produce said break, but the simple fact is that the majority of the break's cause was time and repeated use. The seat in question was old before we moved into the house, so we probably should have replaced it as soon as we moved in. Adding insult to injury is the fact that said seat was attached to the bathroom just off of my home office, so it saw what could charitably be called 'increased traffic' over the last two years. Anyway, one thing finally led to another, and one of the hinges gave way in a dramatic fashion that nearly spilled me off of the toilet itself and into the bathtub residing right next to it.
Once I'd recovered from the initial break -- and cleaned up the bathroom....aaaand changed clothes.... -- I went out and procured a replacement seat. Now, it is very, very fair to say that replacing a toilet seat is not a complicated process. You should only ever need a screwdriver, and that's just to help tighten down the bolts that pass through the bowl itself and anchor the seat down. The rest of the job is designed to be 'tool-less'. Because of this, and because I've actually installed quite a few toilet seats over the years, I elected not to read the installation instructions that came with said toilet seat, and just get it done.
The old seat came off easily. The hardest part was manually unscrewing the restraining nuts from the bolts themselves. The bolts holding the average toilet seat on are laughably long, and very finely threaded, so it takes FOREVER to unscrew them by hand. That done, I cleaned the revealed portion of the bowl with a generous amount of bleach, slapped the new seat on, slotted the new bolts in, and immediately started tightening the restraining nuts. This takes FOREVER for the same reason that unscrewing them does.
It was at this point that I realized, in a moment of extreme irony, that I actually had to poo. Rather than walk down the hallway to the other bathroom on the second level of my home, however, I resolved to postpone my cargo drop so that I could properly break in the new seat. This presented a different problem: How, exactly, does one quickly install a new toilet seat when one has to poo so badly that they're hopping back and forth from one foot to another?
Solution? POWER TOOLS!
I scamper down down a flight of stairs, passing TWO TOILETS along the way, waddle out to the garage, grab a cordless drill and the appropriate attachments, scamper back UP a flight of stairs, once again passing TWO TOILETS along the way, thinking, "I'm gonna get NASCAR on that toilet seat here in a second."
In case you're wondering, an 18-Volt cordless drill is more than powerful enough to get this job done REALLY FAST, and I was pleased with myself as I installed that toilet seat in what I was certain was record time. The bolts went in, the nuts went on, and two trigger-pulls later, I was in business! I set the drill down, went to close the vanity covers on the bolts and...they wouldn't close! Why won't the vanity covers close?! Worse, with the vanity covers up, I discovered that you can't actually raise the toilet lid all the way.
DISASTER!
A quick investigation of the instructions revealed my mistake. Apparently, this was some kind of new whiz-bang toilet seat that you install the bolts differently in, and because I'd done it wrong, it wouldn't be possible to close the vanity covers, and thus USE THE SEAT. Indeed, I would have to completely remove the seat in order to resolve the situation. No problem! I still had my trusty drill at hand, after all!
That's when I discovered something else that cordless drills are really good at: Stripping the heads of plastic bolts.
I may have been overzealous when I was tightening the bolts down with the drill, and now one of the bolts was well and truly useless. The seat was still useless, and I still had to poo. Worse, because I couldn't work on the seat from above, I knew that I'd have to get a wrench or something around the nut from below, which would take FOREVER, and I was quite close to redecorating the inside of my pants as it was. This was when I realized that there was only one way to resolve the situation.
Deep Well sockets and a ratchet!
Sooo, I scamper back down the flight of stairs, passing TWO PERFECTLY FUNCTIONAL TOILETS along the way, hobble out to the garage, disassemble the drill -- because I'm not a goddamn barbarian and I actually put my tools away properly -- rummage around in the tool box, find my sockets and my ratchet, and head back inside, back up the flight of stairs and past those same TWO PERFECTLY FUNCTIONAL TOILETS.
The sockets worked perfectly. Off the seat came, adjustments were made, and on it went again. Vanity caps were snapped on, I raised the seat, dropped my tweeds and...
Nothing.
In the midst of my brilliant victory over Satan's own toilet seat, my bowels had given up on trying to evacuate themselves and had gone to sleep. I had just been punk'd by my colon.
Moral of the story? Always use the right tool for the job. Unless that tool is me.
Our story begins with a broken toilet seat. I'd love to regale you with a Moby Dick-esque tale about the battle that took place to produce said break, but the simple fact is that the majority of the break's cause was time and repeated use. The seat in question was old before we moved into the house, so we probably should have replaced it as soon as we moved in. Adding insult to injury is the fact that said seat was attached to the bathroom just off of my home office, so it saw what could charitably be called 'increased traffic' over the last two years. Anyway, one thing finally led to another, and one of the hinges gave way in a dramatic fashion that nearly spilled me off of the toilet itself and into the bathtub residing right next to it.
Once I'd recovered from the initial break -- and cleaned up the bathroom....aaaand changed clothes.... -- I went out and procured a replacement seat. Now, it is very, very fair to say that replacing a toilet seat is not a complicated process. You should only ever need a screwdriver, and that's just to help tighten down the bolts that pass through the bowl itself and anchor the seat down. The rest of the job is designed to be 'tool-less'. Because of this, and because I've actually installed quite a few toilet seats over the years, I elected not to read the installation instructions that came with said toilet seat, and just get it done.
The old seat came off easily. The hardest part was manually unscrewing the restraining nuts from the bolts themselves. The bolts holding the average toilet seat on are laughably long, and very finely threaded, so it takes FOREVER to unscrew them by hand. That done, I cleaned the revealed portion of the bowl with a generous amount of bleach, slapped the new seat on, slotted the new bolts in, and immediately started tightening the restraining nuts. This takes FOREVER for the same reason that unscrewing them does.
It was at this point that I realized, in a moment of extreme irony, that I actually had to poo. Rather than walk down the hallway to the other bathroom on the second level of my home, however, I resolved to postpone my cargo drop so that I could properly break in the new seat. This presented a different problem: How, exactly, does one quickly install a new toilet seat when one has to poo so badly that they're hopping back and forth from one foot to another?
Solution? POWER TOOLS!
I scamper down down a flight of stairs, passing TWO TOILETS along the way, waddle out to the garage, grab a cordless drill and the appropriate attachments, scamper back UP a flight of stairs, once again passing TWO TOILETS along the way, thinking, "I'm gonna get NASCAR on that toilet seat here in a second."
In case you're wondering, an 18-Volt cordless drill is more than powerful enough to get this job done REALLY FAST, and I was pleased with myself as I installed that toilet seat in what I was certain was record time. The bolts went in, the nuts went on, and two trigger-pulls later, I was in business! I set the drill down, went to close the vanity covers on the bolts and...they wouldn't close! Why won't the vanity covers close?! Worse, with the vanity covers up, I discovered that you can't actually raise the toilet lid all the way.
DISASTER!
A quick investigation of the instructions revealed my mistake. Apparently, this was some kind of new whiz-bang toilet seat that you install the bolts differently in, and because I'd done it wrong, it wouldn't be possible to close the vanity covers, and thus USE THE SEAT. Indeed, I would have to completely remove the seat in order to resolve the situation. No problem! I still had my trusty drill at hand, after all!
That's when I discovered something else that cordless drills are really good at: Stripping the heads of plastic bolts.
I may have been overzealous when I was tightening the bolts down with the drill, and now one of the bolts was well and truly useless. The seat was still useless, and I still had to poo. Worse, because I couldn't work on the seat from above, I knew that I'd have to get a wrench or something around the nut from below, which would take FOREVER, and I was quite close to redecorating the inside of my pants as it was. This was when I realized that there was only one way to resolve the situation.
Deep Well sockets and a ratchet!
Sooo, I scamper back down the flight of stairs, passing TWO PERFECTLY FUNCTIONAL TOILETS along the way, hobble out to the garage, disassemble the drill -- because I'm not a goddamn barbarian and I actually put my tools away properly -- rummage around in the tool box, find my sockets and my ratchet, and head back inside, back up the flight of stairs and past those same TWO PERFECTLY FUNCTIONAL TOILETS.
The sockets worked perfectly. Off the seat came, adjustments were made, and on it went again. Vanity caps were snapped on, I raised the seat, dropped my tweeds and...
Nothing.
In the midst of my brilliant victory over Satan's own toilet seat, my bowels had given up on trying to evacuate themselves and had gone to sleep. I had just been punk'd by my colon.
Moral of the story? Always use the right tool for the job. Unless that tool is me.
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