Monday, June 16, 2014

Repurpose: a 'quick' fix

Sometimes with old houses, you just have to live with something the way it is... because to fix or repair it properly would open up 25 (literally) other problems and projects.  Okay, maybe not sometimes - maybe a lot of the time.  Us old-home owners call it "character"  ;)

You might recall that many moons ago, GW and I played plumber when we discovered a leaky wax ring on our toilet.  Our only toilet.  When we took the old one off, it was so old it broke and we had to buy a new one.  

When we put in the new one, it was much smaller, and unfortunately left a bit of "character" visible that I wasn't pleased with.


No, it's not poo in the top right, that's
the old wax seal that was leaking
Our new, smaller toilet.... AAAAND the
holes in the tile from the old one
Here are a couple of the photos from when we installed it.  Can you guess what character I was talking about?  

You mean those two holes in our 1939 subway tile... right above the toilet tank?

They're from the bolts that held the old tank to the wall (it was separate from the bowl).  Sigh.





While browsing Pinterest one day, I found a DIY for inserting a product that looks like rods into there, and then putting a glass shelf on it.  Huzzah!!!  Solution found!  Although not really.  The blog I saw it on bought them at Home Depot in America... and the Canadian HD didn't have them.  

But guess who did!?!?!  While searching for a latch for the croquet set, I found these rod thingies at Lee Valley!  LV wins again - so I grabbed a pair and took another 6 months or so to install them and throw together a quick shelf.

And it appears that they were!
Goodbye holes, hellooooo shelf!
I assumed the holes were level as they
held up the toilet before.
The one trick I learned is that to get the double ended screw into the wall (so you can screw the rod onto it), you put it into your drill like it's a drill bit.  It's disappointing how long it took me to figure that out, but I did... and it's done!!

I was going to do glass eventually, but GW likes the vintage look of what I did.  I guess it stays.


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