Walkout Basement Bathroom

Shortly after we moved in, we decided to re-do most of the flooring in the house and that included the new tile in the bathroom in our walkout basement. In order to do the floor properly, I had to remove the toilet and found that the PVC (plastic) flange was broken. The flange is where the toilet connects to the floor and is pretty important in making sure that everything unsavory is properly routed to the place where you want unsavory things to go and nowhere else.



In our basement as in most basements, the floor is what's called a "slab" meaning that it is made out of cement and there is no space under it. Just dirt. So unless I want to take out the newly installed floor and jack hammer the cement around the opening, all the work has to be done from the top. In this case the broken piece actually had been inserted into the sewer pipe (also PCP) and cemented into place using PCP cement. PCP cement is designed to melt the plastic, or PCP, from both pieces and cause an everlasting bond. The two pieces effectively become one.

So, we see from the first picture (taken by my Blackberry, my camera is still being repaired) that the piece is coming out in small shards. I used a small hacksaw and some small wood chisels and literally performed some tiresome and difficult sculpturing in plastic but it worked.



In the second picture, we see the new flange, now installed properly (I hope) so it won't break like the last one did. Below is the finished project. Not really a work of art unless you're the one who spent all day installing it. I also replaced all of the innards (valves, gaskets, floats, etc.) with new top drawer stuff and I truly believe (hope?) this unit will function properly for a long, long time.

Note also that the wall paper which is uglier than it looks has, at least around the toilet, received it's coat of oil-based primer and been painted the final beige color. I've found that it is much easier to paint the walls behind toilets when they aren't there.



And soooo... time marches on.