DIY toilet replacement  is a very simple project, and it shouldn’t intimidate anyone with a couple of wrenches and about 2 hours of time.  (Oh, and you’ll need to be strong enough to lift a toilet and carry it to where it needs to go.)

I won’t go into too much detail since the process of removing and installing a toilet is so well-documented on the web.  This video gets a link because it covers the whole process in just 3 minutes, while every other video I found wanted me to commit 9 whole minutes of my life to this crap.

Removing the Existing Toilet

Here is our old toilet, guilty of many crimes including incontinence (it leaks water at its base), and creating intolerable levels of drama when attempting to flush loads of “a respectable size”.

Toilet Removal Steps

Removing a toilet is easy and fun.

1. Turn off the water supply at the wall
2. Flush it to get rid of the water in the bowl and the tank
3. Disconnect water supply from toilet
4. Use a big towel to mop out any water remaining in the bowl
5. Remove the caps at its base to expose the screws/nuts holding it to the floor
6. Unscrew the nuts
7. Lift toilet!  You’re free now, toilet! (We put ours on a towel in the next room)

Overreact to Wax Ring

EWWW GROSS!  (I don’t think poo actually touches the ring, but it’s fun to pretend.)

Our wax ring was basically a wax pancake.  We’re lucky our toilet leaks weren’t floods:

Remove Wax Ring

…with your bare hands!  Just kidding, use a tool for god’s sake.

Here I am scraping off all the old wax, which is the bestest most awesome job in the entire world:

New Wax Ring

Here’s the plump new wax ring ready to receive new potty.  Lift the potty and place it squarely on the ring.  Rock the toilet a bit and sit on it to squish it down.

Filling the New Toilet with Water

Connect the water supply to the toilet.  This might be a good time to switch to a braided water supply if your old one is a metal pipe.

Turn the water supply on and let the tank fill.  You can adjust the water level inside the tank by adjusting how high the float is allowed to go (your toilet may vary).

The Maiden Flush

Am I the only person who half-expects the toilet to explode on the first flush?  :D

All done – a new toilet, installed all by ourselves!  DIY toilet replacement is fun for the whole family.

Disposing of the Old Toilet

Good luck.

Our local garbage pickup here won’t take them. The annual recycling event takes them, but … we missed it by a weekend.  Your options are basically: smash it inside a garbage bag, haul it to the dump yourself, pay someone to take it.

Update: This particular toilet lived in our computer room for two months until we paid the guys who hauled out the deck debris to take the toilet, too.  They were surprisingly happy to take the toilet off our hands.