Julie insisted the toilet stop leaking water on the floor and even bought me the parts needed to fix the leaks. The seal between the tank and bowl was eroded and I later discovered that the bolts which held the tank and bowl together were also of poor quality.

I drained the tank with ease once the water was turned off and I flushed the toilet. I then happily started removing the three bolts which prevent me from removing the tank. The happiness ended quickly when I realized the bolts were corroded and rusted. The nut and bolt were tightly held together and no amount of force would free them.

Around 10pm on Friday we called up a neighbor to borrow some better tools because we didn’t have a good size flathead screwdriver. I came away with a screwdriver, chisel, and WD-40. Neither of which really helped matters.

The chisel gave me the idea to lodge our mini-crowbar between the tank and bowl and break the bolts. I was able to successfully take out one bolt this way by 2am Friday night but at that point I was wiped out. I went to bed shortly there-after.

The next morning I was able to take another bolt this way without cracking the bowl. I’d line up the crowbar and pound on it with an engineer’s hammer.

With two bolts gone, I had one last bolt to get off before I could remove the tank.

The back bolt.

The hardest one to get to.

Sigh.

I tried just about everything before giving up and walking up to the local hardware store and buying some cancer causing liquid corrosive material remover, an even smaller crowbar, and a large flathead screwdriver (so I don’t have to bug a neighbor and my boss at 10pm).

After I got back with my new tools I went to town on the back bolt but cracked the rear of the bowl in the process. It wasn’t a big deal and didn’t cause any leaks. At this point I was leery of banging on the toilet anymore so I started double checking my toolbox again. At the bottom was exactly the tool I desired - a large hacksaw blade.

Flashback: I had a mini-hacksaw blade and hacksaw that I couldn’t fit into the space around the toilet or I would have just sawed the bolts off to begin with. Julie swore we had a larger blade but I just couldn’t find it. But there it was at the bottom of the toolbox.

This particular blade mounts on a screwdriver like handle and it was easy to fit into small spaces. It took probably ten minutes and I had the last bolt off.

Removing the tank was simple and the next steps involved cleaning all of the pieces to get any junk off.

We bought an extra thick seal and it fit the tank just fine, our neighbor told us that he once bought the wrong seal for his bowl and it was of the thinner type. He thought the extra think would fit any type of bowl.

I put the whole thing back together, including krazy gluing the broken piece back on, and it was a bit tricky to figure out the right tightness setting for each of the three bolts. I thought I had it the first time but subsequent visits to the bathroom told me it was still leaking. Around 1am Saturday night I drained the tank and reset the seal and bolts again - this time I didn’t have any leaks what-so-ever.

Altogether I spent around 16 hours fixing the darn toilet and I guess I have a new appreciation for plumbers and municipal sanitation workers.