The Story of How I Ended Up Renovating the Toilet "Too"

When it comes to renovations, the three main water areas are the bath, toilet, and kitchen. Initially, I thought just doing the bath would be enough...

In the end, I had them do the toilet too. And, although I haven't finished the painting I'm planning to do myself, and I'm not doing the kitchen yet because I have to clean the brushes and such, I feel like I'll end up doing that too. (At the very least, I have to deal with the noisy ventilation fan eventually, but since I'm not that concerned about the hygiene of the kitchen, I'm leaving it for now.)

It's been a little while. I'm Usatosan. Honestly, I was so exhausted from moving that I didn't feel like doing anything.

Even though it was the end of the year, I'm really grateful to the contractors who came to do the renovation. I asked the same company that did the bath.

And, the floor and walls were made to match the bath. The top photo is the actual After photo.

Why I decided to renovate the toilet too

Although I had decided early on to renovate the bath, at that time I told the contractor, "I think I'll just change the washlet seat." Because in my previous rental, the toilet wasn't new either, but I had just installed a washlet.

Honestly, I was also bothered by the fact that the toilet bowl was prone to getting dirty. But the deciding factor was the air freshener-like scent that lingered no matter how much I ventilated it.
What is this?

I thought, and when I opened the tank lid...

I didn't take a photo, okay? I didn't take one, but there was enough mold to make me recoil. And, there was even a mysterious beer bottle inside... Why is there a beer bottle in there? The water inside must have been rotting, right?

By the way, I opened it at my previous house too, and while I thought it wasn't clean, it wasn't this dirty. This time, I was truly appalled.

I mean, it's like, how bad is the plumbing in this house?!

I am well aware that if you are going to write an article or make a video, you should take Before photos, but I really didn't feel like taking Before photos of this house.

I just thought, "What on earth is this?"
So, if I hadn't looked, it didn't look that dirty at first glance, so it would have been okay, but it was no longer okay.

It was that dirty.

If you've been living in a newly built house yourself, you might not mind because you're the one who made it dirty, but after all, this was originally someone else's house.
It really bothers me!

Also, while not as bad as the bathroom door, there was a large dent in the toilet door that bothered me, and I wanted to change that too.
The reason there was a dent in the door is probably this, which I wrote about in thebath renovationarticle.

As I also wrote in the bath article, I have changed the bathroom door to a sliding door.

If you buy a used house that is over 20 years old,
it might be the right choice to change all the plumbing.

Honestly, I think my own estimate for this area was a bit naive.
Even with the bath, I didn't mind it at all during the viewing, but once I started living there, the smell bothered me, and it became a room I kept the ventilation fan on in and never opened. As for the toilet, I was so focused on the bath that I didn't notice it, but once things settled down, it started to bother me.

I thought that if you buy a used house, you should set aside an extra 3 million yen in your budget for plumbing renovations just in case.
By the way, it seems like 2 million for the bath, 400,000 for the toilet, and about 800,000 if you do the kitchen too.

Well, I think one option is to leave it until it bothers you, and if it doesn't bother you, don't change it. I grew up in my parents' house and bought a house that was about 3 years old, so it never bothered me at all.

Conversely, I feel like I don't really mind minor issues in areas other than the plumbing, and I feel like I could handle them myself.

However, come to think of it, in my previous rental, the bathroom had a faint, lingering odor. It felt like something was there. I hated it so much that I only used the gym showers for a month, but whenever I did shower at home, moth flies would emerge.

I ended up calling a cleaning service out of my own pocket. It turned out there was a massive amount of hair under the bathtub—possibly 30 years' worth... I have zero psychic ability, but apparently, I could sense someone else's hair for some reason (lol).

It was seriously like a horror movie.

That's what happened.
When I showed the photos to the cleaning crew, they told me I could have billed the landlord for it. But at the time, I didn't really understand how rentals worked, and since I only paid the cleaners about 15,000 yen, I didn't end up asking for reimbursement.

Once they cleaned it thoroughly, the feeling of something being there and the moth flies both disappeared.

But you know, if that had been a condo I owned instead of a rental, I might have replaced the entire unit bath (lol).

After getting a new bath, and now that the toilet is new too, I feel absolutely amazing!

I mean, I've started to think that as long as I change the plumbing, this place can still keep going for a while.

Next time, I'm planning to share a two-month review of the bath and laundry area renovation.