Flushing the $ away

No one can say life in the Donahue household is uneventful. About a week ago, I asked Ryan to replace the wax seal on two of our toilets as the toilets were wobbly when you sat on them. He's still off on parental leave so I thought this would be a good time to get him to do it. This isn't a very expensive problem; the wax rings cost about $4.00. Our $8.00 problem has since escalated into an entire bathroom reno. When Ryan pulled up the toilet in the master bathroom he noticed that one of the tiles under the toilet was cracked. He decided that since he already had the toilet off, he might as well replace it - no big deal except that when he pried the tile out he noticed that the subfloor was wet and rotten because the toilet had been leaking. Oh no! So, we had to take out all the tile in the bathroom and replace the subfloor. We started talking and thought that since we had the tile up already that maybe we should think about replacing the vanity...and the fixtures...and of course we now need new tile...and the list continues. Our $8.00 problem has turned into a few hundred $ problem.

On the one hand it's good that we found out that the subfloor was rotten. If we hadn't found it the water damage probably would have started leaking through the kitchen ceiling and that would have been REALLY bad. I also like the idea of having a renovated bathroom; however, we really can't afford the costs right now. After thinking things over, we've decided to postpone the renovations until we've saved a bit of money - we're going to finish them in the summer. We bought a cheap piece of lino to put on the floor in the meantime. Ryan tried to reinstall the toilet, only to find that after being in the garage in sub zero weather, the bottom of the trap cracked...another trip to home depot to purchase a new toilet. At least we now can boast that we have an enviromentally friendly, dual flush model. I don't think there is such a thing as an inexpensive solution - Murphy's law is alive and well!