The stunning toilet pictured above is the actual toilet purchased by the Coles.
It came time that Bruce and I decided we had to replace the two toilets in our humble establishment. One in the main bath and the other in the master bath. The workings inside the tank of the master bath toilet had broken so the handle didn’t work and I had decided I would fix it myself. That was why it was still broken.
I had watched numerous You Tube videos on how to complete this procedure and they all looked simple enough but there comes a point in every one of those toilet videos where I, Judy Cole, was going to have to touch something that I didn’t want to touch, gloves included.
There was no getting around it. On my meter of the stuff I enjoy doing, this task sat solidly under ICK. So this poor little toilet sat broken, waiting for me to get around to becoming a different person altogether and that just didn’t seem to be happening.
On our choice of new toilets, Bru felt he had an opinion too which is not how I raised him, but I was curious, so I heard him out. He already had an extender on our main bath toilet to raise the seat to 18” and be darned if he didn’t want to find a toilet that already had that built in. The Dickens You Say.
So that became Number 1 on our list of what we needed in our new toilet.
I had already decided that the outside of the toilet, just to the back of the bowl, where it looks like a 3D rendition of intestines, is really annoying to clean. I don’t know if that is a necessary design for better flushing or if it is decorative, but if any dust, cat hair or Kleenex fuzz is going to settle somewhere, it will be in the furthest intestine from where I can reach comfortably. I have made it my life’s work to spend as little time as possible with my head 1 inch from the side of any toilet. I have issues – I am well aware of my feelings towards the Litterbox and if I ever write anything in my blog entitled Public Washrooms, just move along – don’t even open that article. It means I have finally snapped and it won’t be pretty.
To begin our journey into the world of purchasing a new 2018 toilet, we started online because, well, why would anyone go outside when you can stay inside? Bru started the ball rolling with Home Hardware and he found the perfect model for us. It had the 18” seat and no decorative intestines. It could be installed inside the house and it was affordable.
The final step was to read the Reviews. This is important to me because I like to know what other people are saying. So I chose a few lines that caught my eye because if you are going to review a toilet, then you have to review the toilet:
– The comfort height and stable foundation mean if you like to sit back and read a book while you do your business then this is the toilet for you.
– Everything goes down.
– Bowl always leaves skids.
– The toilet plugs all the time.
– We have even received compliments from guests.
So those were some of the reviews and there were plenty of others. These cover a wide range of toilets and a wide range of people who take this very seriously. I thought a bit about a couple of them too. The person who wrote ‘the toilet plugs all the time’ might want to check their diet a little more closely. I mean, sure, we can all plug a toilet. I think Bru’s dad is responsible for an incident in the States that may have made the local news. But ‘all the time’?
Then the one where they have received compliments from guests. I tried to picture that – you have people over for dinner and someone comes out of your bathroom, running his fingers along the inside of his waistband and says BOB, I JUST TOOK THE WILDEST DUMP IN THERE AND YOUR TOILET WAS NOT ONLY COMFORTABLE BUT IT HANDLED EVERYTHING REALLY WELL. Excellent. I’ll go online and put that in my review.
So, back to our toilet journey. We made contact with our ‘Guy’ and he called the store. They were Out of Stock. Well of course they were. I believe it has something to do with Google asking for our location when we are looking at products online, then it sends a message directly to the warehouse – THE COLES ARE LOOKING AT THIS MODEL – THE COLES ARE LOOKING AT THIS MODEL. Then a company-wide email goes out and all of the computers are immediately updated to Out of Stock on any product where we may have lingered. It’s true.
So we quickly changed tactics and checked out Rona. They had a similar product that was On Sale. It had everything we wanted as well but no reviews, so less lingering on the Internet and therefore, they had five in stock.
I was able to see that this model claimed MaP 1000 and I had to look that up. This refers to the number of grams of solid waste and toilet paper that a toilet can remove from the fixture in a single flush. My mind blew wide open trying to imagine that laboratory. I saw table after table of water imported from Mexico, bowls of chili, meatball subs and hundreds of volunteers eating and then waiting around to test the toilets. There was a second group with rubber gloves, masks and toilet brushes. This group was being paid.
Tragically, it would appear they may have tried that and decided it was too time consuming or something like that because it turns out they just used soybean paste and toilet paper.
Oh right, good idea. Well, I’ve ordered 300 grams of deli-meat and that looks like quite a bit so MaP 1000, clocking in at 1000 grams sounded like it could handle any crisis. We were in.
Our Guy went right over and bought two of them and brought them to the house. He had opened one of the boxes at the store and the toilet was intact. The second box didn’t make any ‘broken porcelain’ noises so he brought it back without opening it. That was the toilet that was all cracked and broken. These poor little toilets come like that quite often, from what I am told, which doesn’t bode well for their future considering that their chief job is to hold up every size of human being sitting on them, some for extended periods of time.
He took the bad one back, brought another good one and we were underway.
One hour later we had two new toilets in the house and the old toilets were resting comfortably somewhere else (I didn’t even remember to say good-bye and I should have made Bru apologize to both of them but it was too late). The two of us had the inevitable discussion as to who was going to defile the new toilets first. That was fun and some relatives were mentioned. We have discussions like that and it explains why we have no friends. We are protecting innocent people. We are kind of like Super-Heroes, really.
So now we are back in business as a two toilet household. The one in the back always worked, but I had to remove the tank cover to flush and I am a bit of a delicate little flower so I hated doing that. But it did come in handy when I needed it.
Now we can even have guests over so they can comment on our new toilets.