The first repair

I don't have a picture, because this post is about fixing a toilet, and you all know what a toilet looks like, right? Picture a newish, low-flow, typical white toilet.

Michael noticed early on that the downstairs bathroom toilet was a bit unsteady on its pins - it rocked a bit. (I didn't really notice, but he has a rather greater mass than I do!) Our first attempt at a fix was the acquisition of toilet shims, and if you take away nothing else from this post, the knowledge that toilet shims exist should make you happy. Happy yet?

Unfortunately when Michael attempted to apply the toilet shims he soon discovered that the toilet base was a little leaky, meaning there was a problem with the wax seal that joins the toilet to its waste pipe in the floor. (One of the toilet shims has found a useful home keeping our cabinet sewing machine slash computer desk from wobbling, but the rest are just in the tool box - holler if you need a toilet shim!) So, while we were all at work or school (this was in August, and Michael's job started a week later than everybody else's activities) Michael took the toilet off the pipe, replaced the wax seal, and replaced the toilet. I wasn't there to see it (and I would have taken pictures, because that would have been cool!). He had never done such a major piece of plumbing work before, despite being generally handy, but he Googled up an illustrated how-to and had very little trouble. It turned out the toilet was actually not bolted to the floor at all - the bolts were in place, but not attached to anything. Michael fixed that. So now we have a non-leaky toilet that is firmly affixed. Yay!