Replacing a toilet & vanity

We're going to attempt this next week. Any tips? :D

The toilet itself is child-height as it has been slated in with 2 inch thick raw slate and then we tiled over that. We're planning on borrowing some electricity from the neighbours (ours has been disconnected for some time now) and angle-grinding it off at ground level and extending the drainpipe with a sleeve. A sledgehammer and a bolster would probably be just as effective at removing the old pan though if the neighbour is too stoned to notice someone at his door. All the plumbing externally is above ground (go figure) so very easy to access, but it does pass through a 50ish cm thick stone wall.

We have a bloke in the know coming to help so it should be ok but scarey toilet stories would be appreciated :D

We're putting a vanity in while we're there too. Had it sitting in a box for the new owner to use but if noone is going to buy the place, what the hey, might as well install it ... lack of electricity won't help with testing if the joins are tight though, don't think we can get around that one, unless I chain a stack of extension cords together or something, but that doesn't sound like a good idea.
 
removing the pan, try this it works for me, disconect the water, and take the systern off,
Lay down on yourback with your feet toward the front of the pan and start with large kicks against the frint of the pan, years of YOUKNOW! would have corroded the screws, or perhaps it was placed in with mud/cement it should come up in a couple of kicks , works every time for me, :)
 
The base of the pan is almost 3 inches under slate and then tiles - as in, it was installed in the 80s and then tiled over. Twice. Once with raw slate that can be anything up to 5cm thick. It aint going to come loose any time soon. Hence wanting to smash it with a sledgehammer or cut it off with an angle grinder.

Sitting on it is like using a child's toilet ...
 
Does the slate and tiles overlap the original base of the pan? if so to kick it out you would need to bring it up with the slate as well.

I would give it a couple of technical taps with a big hammer, fill the recess with mortar then reinstall the new one. You can get an offset pan connector that may make up the difference in height for the new pan.:)
 
Does the slate and tiles overlap the original base of the pan? if so to kick it out you would need to bring it up with the slate as well.

I would give it a couple of technical taps with a big hammer, fill the recess with mortar then reinstall the new one. You can get an offset pan connector that may make up the difference in height for the new pan.:)

two more tile jobs a you would be hitting your head on the ceiling, :D
 
You can get an offset pan connector that may make up the difference in height for the new pan.:)
I reckon that's the technical term for the armwaving our man in the know was doing earlier today :)

two more tile jobs a you would be hitting your head on the ceiling, :D
Pft hardly, its a 12 foot ceiling in there. Well, 10.5 foot in that corner as the toilet is up some steps - it looks really stupid. Its the reason the plumbing is above ground - the previous owner thought it was easier to raise the bathroom floor by 40cm than to dig the plumbing 40cm under the ground. The bathroom was retrofitted into the old funeral parlour's middle room when it was converted to a house and the door closed halfway up to make a window. It has a large fireplace and ornamental picture hooks everywhere, and until we got to it it was mostly baby blue, with a green bath, green ceiling everywhere except the middle where they couldn't reach, and pink in the top half of some of the walls. The previous coat of vibrant deep blue could clearly be seen under the sink. It is now entirely cream with white and beige tiles.

I wanted to get rid of this huge bathroom ages ago and build a new, smaller one as a lean-to out the back and make the existing bathroom into a sunroom or 4th bedroom but the other half said just fix up the existing one. So we did. And now we're fixing it up MORE ...
 
Oh, I wish I knew where my flash card was so I could get some photos.

EVERYONE does a double-take when they see the steps. I had someone suggest I put red carpet there, leading up to the throne.
 
We're going to attempt this next week. Any tips? :D

The toilet itself is child-height as it has been slated in with 2 inch thick raw slate and then we tiled over that. We're planning on borrowing some electricity from the neighbours (ours has been disconnected for some time now) and angle-grinding it off at ground level and extending the drainpipe with a sleeve. A sledgehammer and a bolster would probably be just as effective at removing the old pan though if the neighbour is too stoned to notice someone at his door. All the plumbing externally is above ground (go figure) so very easy to access, but it does pass through a 50ish cm thick stone wall.

We have a bloke in the know coming to help so it should be ok but scarey toilet stories would be appreciated :D

We're putting a vanity in while we're there too. Had it sitting in a box for the new owner to use but if noone is going to buy the place, what the hey, might as well install it ... lack of electricity won't help with testing if the joins are tight though, don't think we can get around that one, unless I chain a stack of extension cords together or something, but that doesn't sound like a good idea.
By the sounds of this building it's not going to fall down in a hurry,with the pan if it's old then you may well find they used Brass screws to set it,and they don't give,just turn the water off,put some safety glasses on and give it one big hit at the base and it will split,don't know about the 50cm wall,who ever built the house made it to last..good luck willair..
 
The building is a commercial one from the 1870s, which explains the large scale and the strange floorplan. It got converted to a house in the 1980s so the bathroom stuff is 'modern' to a point, the pan predates dual flushes and the sink is one of the cast metal ones that bolts to the wall with no pedestal or drawers. The house isn't tied so one of the walls (funnily enough, the bathroom one) has moved outwards about 10cm in the last 130 years, so sadly I don't think it'll last forever.

The conversion to a house was incredibly bad. Should have seen what they did with the kitchen - the HWS in there was this little zip one like you'd see in an office kitchen to make coffee with. It was precariously stuck to the wall with *one* dynabolt, with a single copper pipe to the sink (no cold) and the sink itself was an ancient cast metal one recessed under a wooden drainer set into a very old wooden shop counter. No oven, no other HWS in the entire house. Classy stuff.
 
As far as the waste outlet for the toilet is concerned, rather than raising the pipe through the wall, (if an offset pan connector won't go high enough), if the room is big enough you could move the new pan forward and build a false wall behind it. This would allow enough room to put a couple of bends in the pipe to get it to the correct level.:)
 
Oooh, that's a good idea (there's about 1500 or so in front of the toilet, probably more). Could use a shelf there too - a full height wall would be dumb but a cistern height one would work.

Started on the vanity today. The stupid steps are in the way and the original sink was set back where the door-converted-to-window is, which means the wall there is a single stone thick not 50cm thick. The recess is about 15cm deep and 89cm wide and the vanity is 90cm wide, and the step is about an inch higher than the base panel of the vanity. It looks really bad sitting forward of the window recess and left of the step so just plunking it there and putting a 15cm infill panel around the edges would be a Bad Idea.

We're going to chisel off 1cm of the bottom part of the recess above the step, cut out the bottom of the vanity to fit the step into it, and raise the vanity that extra inch. The vanity cabinet is 89.5 and only the molded top that has the sink in it is 90 so most of the way only needs 1/2 cm off it. Then we go nuts on the silicone around the edges so no water can get into the cut melamine.

Started on the cabinet in the other room too, using 290x19 pine planks which will make a cabinet about 60cm deep. Typically, the fireplace is 111.5cm at the bottom and 109.5cm at the top. Didn't they make ANYTHING square in the 1870s? Sheesh! :rolleyes:
 
sounds sweet as

A toilet up some steps-
Sounds like a wicked throne to me.
Would get a timber seat, and buy some really solid chunky wood to buid awesome massive arm rests. Little shelf to the side to place ones crown on, and voila, a crapper fit for her majesty :rolleyes:
 
Hi RE, did you get it changed over and if so how did it go?:)
We had a minor mishap involving a spade bit, a finger, an artery (who knew arteries in fingers did the same as arteries everywhere else?) and the hospital that has put a dent in things ...

Got the vanity mostly in, taking 1/2 cm off one side of a wall always ends up taking several inches off the other side of the wall as solid plaster likes to come off in sheets, so I have some cleaning up to do - blood as well as replastering. Its a freakin 4x3m bathroom and there is blood on every wall :eek:

The real big hammer comes into play in a day or two once the finger is a bit more healed.

I got my cabinet together too, looks a treat and adds a massive amount of storage (3 shelves, about 1mx1m and 60cm deep). Much nicer than a scungy old open fireplace that occasionally lobs a lump of soot onto the carpet. And I had a "very keen" prospective tenant come through 5 minutes after the blood, so she's coming back with references next week. There's only two houses for rent in the town and one is barely half the size of mine with only two bedrooms (she has 3 kids) so that's pretty much a guaranteed tenant :D
 
Sorry to hear about the blood, (and I know the feeling well), hope all goes well and you get the dunny and the tenant installed soon.:)
 
Oooh and I found my flash card too - right in the middle of the coffee table (it wasn't there yesterday, we have a toddler who moves things mysteriously) so I can get some photos tomorrow :D

The vanity has a gap behind it so we're just going to cut some of the really dense hardwood we have out the back to fit a little panel there. Bit of polyurethane and some clear silicone and it should be good.
 
Took out the loo yesterday. It was trivial.

Came out with a regular hammer and a few taps BUT the very base of the pan was around 4-5 inches under the floor :eek: Explains why it felt so low ...

Smashed out the ceramic of the outlet pipe down to the plastic, our toilet expert cometh tomorrow so he can tell us what bits we need.

The bit of hardwood behind the sink jobbie looks very nice, there's just something about that lovely deep red colour that's nicer than pine or tiles.

This is the last job (besides mowing the 1000sqm or so of waist high weeds out the back past the landscaped section) before a tenant can move in.
 
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