Speaking of toilets, my brother and I are going to be putting tile down in the main bathroom here at our house tomorrow. To prepare for that, I went up to take the toilet out so we could put tile down underneath.

I turned off the supply valve for the toilet. No problems there.

I flushed the toilet to empty the tank. Great.

I popped the bolt covers off each side of the base of the toilet. Left side came off and I saw the nut and bolt. Right side came off and I saw... brown. It looked like a pile of bacon bits under there.

I looked at it more closely and it became apparent the bolt and nut had experienced a lot of rust- probably as a result of the water that came down through the ceiling.

I cleaned it off a little, but the rust had pretty much welded the nut and bolt together. I did manage to get a socket on the rusty nut after I got the clean nut on the left side off, but it just sheered off below the bowl base.

I don’t know what this bolt looks like. I don’t know if it’s is attached to the closet flange or if it screws into the wood of the subfloor.

Looking at the pictures of the various flanges available for purchase at the Home Depot website, it looks like now that I’ve got this one nut off, I might be able to jimmy the bolt out and the push the bowl base to the right.

A Stack & Seal flange

Anchor Flange

(Thank you Home Depot for those images!)

If what I have is the anchor flange, I may be in trouble.

I went downstairs to see if I could see where the other side of this bolt is. It looks like the drainpipe for the toilet penetrates the upstairs floor right above a major section of HVAC ductwork. I.e. I can’t see it or get to it. Oh joy.

I guess I can try to hacksaw this rusty bolt or something like that. I think I’m going to wait until my brother comes tomorrow and see what he says (after he stops cussing about it).