Girly Girl's Guide to Installing a Toilet 

The Girly Girl's Guide to Installing a Toilet
By Liz Wasson

When I called my nephew to ask if he wanted to help me put the toilet in there was silence on the other end of the phone. Not too long ago we had to replace a 40-year-old sewer line and in the process an old toilet in a spare room got ripped out. Not only did I actually manage to fix the floor with something called vinyl concrete I also decided to put in the toilet myself. I will admit I did cheat sort of as I watched a couple YouTube videos.

So do we girlie types really need a man to stick our toilets in? Actually no...although it is nice if you've got one about. Being the single gal I am I decided I'd just do it myself. What I discovered is that it's not that hard to put a toilet in.

The first thing is the wax ring ... actually it's opening the box and getting the toilet out. Now if you've been going to the gym doing your workouts like all girly girls should be doing then you can master this task. Once you've got the toilet and all parts, tank, lid, seat and assorted bolts out you'll notice this wax ring. Now I'll admit I upgraded my wax ring to I think something called a Johnny number three. Just so you know these rings are okay to touch, they are made of beeswax and the idea is to make a waterproof seal between the sewer line and the toilet.

I stuck the ring in the sewer hole and lifted the toilet onto the bolts coming out of the floor. It was actually pretty easy. Then what I did was rock the toilet back and forth securing the toilet onto the wax ring. The next part was putting the bolts on which was really easy and as a side note the manly man instructions always say not to over tighten the bolts because you could break the ceramic toilet: girly girls never over tighten their bolts because they are not manly men. I didn't have to worry about cracking the porcelain, you can imagine what a relief that was.

The toilet I bought is for my back office and so I got the cheapest one I could at Home Depot, only 80 bucks. It was a two-part toilet so I had to put the tank on after getting the base secured to the floor. This was super simple and the only semi hard part was screwing the wing nuts onto these bolts hiding behind the tank. Because I'm a girly girl I have long thin fingers so in the end I could maneuver in the tight fitting area. After getting the tank on I put the handle in and hooked it up to the flapper.

Next I connected the water line by simply screwing it in on the back of the tank. I'm going to give you a manly man tip -- there is this stuff called, maybe, plumber's tape... I don't know the name of it but any hardware store can tell you. Basically it's this super thin tape that is used to wrap around the pipe fittings, you know the threads, so that when you screw the valve on it makes a water tight seal. The stuff is really handy and I learned about it from a manly man. If you don't have the stuff you should go ask any manly man you know and they'll know what it is. (As a side-note most manly men get a kick out of girly girls who have no idea what the stuff is called but try endlessly describing it until they finally say "oh, I know what you're talking about".)

Once I got everything put together I turned the water on and let the tank fill and then flushed the toilet. To my delight and amazement it worked. Nothing leaked, there were no floods, and I didn't have to pay a $150 to some guy with his underwear showing to hook-up my toilet.

If you're a girly girl and you don't have a manly man trust me you can put your own toilet in.

Liz Wasson is a single gal writing about single gal experiences like installing toilets when nephews won't help you and brothers are out of town. Liz writes about all kinds of things including memory foam mattress pads which she loves to lie down on because they feel good. Liz is trying to decide if latex mattress topper even come close in comparison.

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