How Our Magical Toilet Got a Guy in Rona All Worried

I never thought I'd use the words "toilet" and "magical" in the same sentence, but hey, there's a first time for everything, right?

Look at this toilet.

Looks innocent enough, yea? That's what we thought, too.

But during our home inspection, we found out that it was leaking. It was a good thing that we planned to have two weeks in which we'd have both the rental and the new apartment. We (correctly) thought that it might take some time to prepare the space and move in. Otherwise, we'd have had to sneak to the 24-hour cafe two blocks away every time we needed to use the bathroom.

And for the first five days since we got the keys, that was what we did. Many times, we chose to hold it in until it was lunch/dinner time or until we were done for the day. We also minimized our liquid intake whenever we were there doing renovations. It wasn't very fun.

We started trying to change the toilet on Day 2. Note the usage of the word "trying". We managed to remove the old leaky toilet and we only had a hole in the ground the same day.

But we found something unexpected there. The online videos and tutorials we saw did not say anything about the flange (the metal ring on the floor) being covered by a bendable metal thing.

A bendable metal ring on the toilet flange. Hole censored 'cos it's kinda gross...okay, really gross.

 

So we went to the nearest Rona and got some advice from a middle-aged gentleman who worked there. Turned out the bendable metal thing was a pipe for funneling the stuff from the toilet down into the hole. And we weren't supposed to touch it. Good thing we went to Rona; Vee almost decided to remove it because he thought it was just something that came with the old toilet!

Before we left the home improvement store, the man who helped us put his hand on Vee's arm and, with the sincerest concerned look on his face, said, "I'm worried for you." Truth be told, we were worried for us, too, kind sir.

But what do you know, we went home and three days later the new toilet was installed. When we turned on the water supply and saw the toilet bowl filling up and there was no leak at all anywhere, I'm telling you, "magical" was the word that popped up in my head.

It's like in html-coding class when I finish writing all the code and hit Enter...then wait nervously for either the finished page or an error message to appear on the screen...and then joy of joys, the page I've been working on appears in all its glory and I don't have to spend the rest of the day staring at nonsensical rows of letters and numbers looking for the one dot I missed.

We had to wait for the tank to finish filling up to try flushing, so we worked on the living room while waiting. When we heard the water stop, I swear there was jumping and joyous exclamations. We literally ran to the bathroom and promptly took a picture of our magical toilet's maiden flush.

See, no leak!

I only wish the Rona dude could see it so we can all gaze proudly at the porcelain miracle.