Whoever stops fighting first always loses.

I haven't been online since friday for one reason. A clogged toilet. Isn't that peachy.

So how does a clogged toilet go from an easy snaking to a complete and total renovation of a hallway potty?

Let a 2 year old get a hold of it. That's right. A two year old. Somehow he found a bag of those plastic easter eggs that you put money and candy into at Easter time for the kiddies.

He thought playing basketball in the toilet was a good idea. Only he picked the one that still had money in it. This was enough to allow it to sink through the drain enough to get passed the first bend in the trap, but also lodge permanently.

So when the 6 year old went in to do her business, there was no sign of any obstruction. Not that it would stop her if she could see anything, but I digress.

So snaking doesn't work. I get confirmation from the two year old of what he threw down there, by going to his now hidden stash of easter eggs, and showing me.

So snaking isn't working and a plumber will cost me $300 bucks to undo the blockage. I can buy a new toilet for less than $200 and install it myself. Something I have done before. So there's the plan of action. New toilet, done and done. It's a 3 hour job tops.

The first issue is emptying the toilet. So I buy a wet vac with the total assumption of it being disposable. After sucking up what was in the bowl (what comes out of a 6 year old is completely mind boggling), there was no way I was going to be reusing that thing. So the night before I pour a little bleach into the bowl so it doesn't stink up the joint. Which works like a charm btw...

Saturday morning I go to the local home store and purchase a brand new toilet, shop vac, and all the incidentals that I believe I am going to need.

Skip to the extraction of the toilet...

Toilet is drained, and the tank is off. As I undo the bolts to the bowl on the floor, I notice problem number one. the idiot who installed THIS toilet (previous home owner), never put the flooring completely around the drain pipe. He sort of cut around the bowl. This is a no-no. There were some uncovered parts of subfloor because of this and he had caulked around the bowl to compensate. The issue here is that the floor is hardwood, and the caulk seeped under alot of the adjacent boards.

So when I tried to pull the bowl off of the floor, the caulking he had used was stuck to the surrounding floor boards acting like glue, ripping them up with the bowl. I cut around the caulk and disposed of the bowl.

Issue number two becomes evident when I place the new bowl on the floor. The profile is much smaller than the previous one leaving about 6 inches of subfloor exposed. Now I need to find replacement flooring, and try to cut it in to the old floor.

Back to the home store and of course, because I run so good, they don't have it. Not even anything close. I make the decision right there to redo the whole floor.

The bathroom is 28sqft. in total so it shouldn't be that hard of a a job, nor that exspensive. I purchase some nice cherry hardwood flooring that was on sale and head back home. As I pull up the old floor I notice that the subfloor is shot around the toilet. That has to come up as well. Then the wife says, since we are doing all of this, why don't we paint as well, since, you know, everything is exposed.

Fast forward to today. Sunday was spent at my parents for birthdays and anniversary's so that was a lost work day. A full day of work on Saturday, and yesterday and I have the new subfloor installed, a new drain pipe, the walls all spackled sanded and primed. I am waiting for the primer to dry right now. Once that is dry, I can paint the new color the wife picked (coral peach), and install the new toilet. Everything should be done by 5pm if I allow 2 hours of dry time on the new paint.

I was so looking forward to posting about the phils, and the eagles (The NFC East to be more specific), and some poker stuff, but I guess that will all wait. I did make it to the Phils game last night towards the 5th inning. Spectacular game no matter how it finished. The Dodgers are really putting themselves out there, and this has proven to be a worthy series to watch even if you don't like baseball.

Everyteam in the NFC lost this weekend. With the exception of the Eagles, which puts them right back in the race. I'll have more on that and the implications later.

For now, I'm back to being Riggs the builder...