Tag Archives: toilet seats

housekeeping tips

Toilet seat hunting… one way to crap off the week…a

This post was written in November 2018.  Sorry for the confusion!

On Monday of this week, I wrote a tale of woe about the toilet seat in our upstairs bathroom.  The bumper on the old toilet seat in our current house busted the other day.  Bill decided to get a new seat.  Off we went to the Toom in Herrenberg to find one.

Bill was armed with the measurements he’d taken of our current commode.  We spent several minutes perusing the impressive array of toilet seats available at our handy German hardware store…

There’s a whole wall of seats.  They range from the colorful to the plain.

Bill found a couple of contenders.

I was amused by all the beach scenes, especially since I grew up pretty close to the ocean and miss it.

This one was in 3D!

I probably would have preferred the zebra.

I was eyeing the toilets jealously, but then remembered that our new house has new toilets… or so we were told.  To be honest, with all the houses we visited, it’s hard to tell who said what.  Suffice to say, I don’t think the toilets in our new house are “water saver” types like the one in our current house’s upstairs bathroom.

Bill paid about 30 euros for the new seat, then we headed into Herrenberg for lunch.  We could have had lunch at the Toom, since they have a full scale snack bar there.  We got to town a little bit later than optimal for lunch.  It was about 1:30pm, which is getting close to “pause” time.  I’m going to miss Herrenberg, so I took a few pictures.

I took a photo of this store because I hope someday to visit and buy a table here.  They have some really beautiful custom made tables in this shop on the main drag through town.  It’s called Lieblingsholz.

Closing down the Saturday market.

A charming sign…

Just before we stopped to take a picture of this sign, we stopped at our favorite local pizzeria.  It was closed today, just as it was last time we were in Herrenberg.  I was looking at the sign and an elderly German guy came over and asked us if we wanted to “have a coffee”.  I was actually talking to Bill when I said, “What did you say?”, but I guess the guy thought I was talking to him.  It turned out the German gent spoke perfect English.  He told us about a really nice bakery down the street that serves coffee.  We were very charmed by his inclination to help us find coffee, even though we were looking for lunch and have lived near Herrenberg a total of six years over two tours!  It was such a nice, welcoming gesture, though!

Herrenberg kind of feels like home.  I fear Wiesbaden may not feel that way to me, because it’s so crowded and people have more money there.  But I have met people from Hesse who live down here near Stuttgart and I have met a guy who is married to someone from Stuttgart who lives in Hesse.  So I guess we’ll find some friendly folks regardless.

Yesterday, Bill stopped by our vets’ office in Herrenberg to pay for the dentals we had them do on our dogs and take care of the VAT form.  One of the vets had recommended that we stock up on wormers and flea and tick pills, so it would be on the VAT, too.  I’m going to miss our vets, too.  They’ve taken great care of our boys and I’ve gotten to know them fairly well, for professional purposes, anyway.  I told them I wouldn’t be surprised if we came back to the area at some point.  This is the place for guys like Bill.

We ended up at Hanoi Pho.  We have eaten there once before and I remembered liking the food.  I liked it today, too.

Shot of Bill after he asked our waiter what the lady next him was having.  She had a bowl full of fried stuff that looked just right for me.

But I ended up having shrimp with vegetables and peanut sauce.  Unfortunately, this had a couple of mushrooms in it, but Bill came to my rescue.  It was otherwise very good and lightly spicy, if not a little heavy.  

Bill went with pho made with beef and noodles.  In the picture, you can also see the mushrooms he took from my dish.  Thankfully, there was just one cut into a few pieces.  It didn’t affect the flavor of the dish.  Bill used some red chili sauce in the pho and it was apparently very potent.  He ate the whole thing and even threatened to drink the broth.  As we were leaving, he was wiping his eyes and nose because the sauce had brought on the waterworks.

The proprietor dropped hints that he was ready for a smoke break when he brought us our bill unrequested.  It came to about 25 euros.  We were about finished anyway.  Bill had to go look for a wrench so he can install the new toilet seat.  Then he said, “I guess I better get some wine, too, since we only have two bottles.  One is Moldovan and the other is semi-sweet.”

My response was, “Oh God, yes, get some wine.”  That’s my Bill.  Always a provider.  He’s been busy today, taking care of some minor maintenance issues like changing lightbulbs and offloading trash.  When he removed the old toilet seat, the bolts were so rusted that one snapped clean off.  It was definitely time for a new seat.  Hope the new tenants like it.

Tada!  After Bill installed this snazzy new seat, he fetched a bottle of wine.  I have now christened the new seat and it’s a vast improvement over the old one.  

If you got through today’s post, I would like to share with you some glorious photos from a couple of sunrises this week.  I think the view at our current house is the best part of our experience here.  I’m going to miss it, too.

These were from Tuesday…

And these were from this morning.  For about twenty minutes each morning, especially when it’s going to be cloudy, we get amazing sunrises and sunsets at this time of year.  Unfortunately, the view from our new home will include a lot of rooftops.  We weren’t as lucky in finding a rural location in Wiesbaden.

I took these on Tuesday with my digital camera, which is capable of zooming.  I loved the big blackbird.  He sits in that tree all the time, looking for rodents.  Sometimes it’s exciting to watch as he and his buddies swoop into the fields, competing with the many cats that prowl the area.

I’m not sure what tomorrow has in store for us.  I suspect I’ll be purchasing some rugs at the PX.  Maybe we’ll stop by the Auld Rogue or something.  Next weekend, we’ll be in Baden-Baden resting up and celebrating our anniversary.

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housekeeping tips

My bad luck with toilets continues…

A few weeks ago, I used the original toilet seat on our “guest toilet” for the last time.  The guest toilet has what was probably once considered a “designer” toilet, shaped like a rectangle.  I don’t like the rectangular toilet.  I have a few reasons for feeling this way.  I think one of my most understandable peeves about it is that it’s not as easy to clean as a regularly shaped toilet is.  It sits really low to the floor and getting under the rim to get all of the shitty detritus off of it can be somewhat challenging.  But I think the biggest reason I don’t like the rectangular toilet is because we just discovered how difficult it is to change the seat.

On a fateful day in late April, I sat down on the “designer” toilet and heard a tiny crack.  One of the plastic hinges had broken, which made the seat shift.  Now… I am definitely not a slim person and never claimed to be, but I doubt I’m heavier than our new landlord is. He’s a big guy, and he used to live in this house.  He’s probably sat on that seat many times.  Based on what the hardware looked like when we removed it, I think it was the original one that came with the toilet.

Removing the seat, by the way, really took some doing because the bolts were pretty much stripped.  I think Bill had to buy a new flathead screwdriver to deal with the screw with a groove too shallow for his tools.  He also had to use Liquid Wrench to try to get the ancient bolt to release.  There was much swearing and time spent as he worked on loosening the bolts so we could replace the seat.

We naively thought it would be easy to get a new lid for the rectangular toilet.  We replaced one of the toilet seats in our last house.  It was a somewhat easy and inexpensive task.  I think we spent maybe 30 minutes and 30 euros or so.  Based on that experience, Bill and I both thought it would be simple enough to replace this seat, since we’ve seen several rectangular toilets in Germany.  In fact, there was one at the Waldhotel in the junior suite.  Our visions of simplicity were not to be realized.

Bill went down to the local hardware store and bought a seat he thought would work based on the measurements he took.  It cost about 70 euros.  The bolts on that seat were too big, so he couldn’t screw them into the toilet.  Even if he had been able to screw them in, it didn’t fit the commode properly.

I have an American friend who lives in the United Kingdom with her Irish husband and their six kids.  She was feeling my pain as I described our toilet seat search.  She says she has them in her house and never replaces the lids because they are so expensive.  Another friend echoed our frustration when she said she was never able to find an appropriately sized toddler seat for her son that would fit her rectangular commode.

After a couple of days of searching locally for the appropriate seat, Bill finally went to a British online toilet seat store, where he managed to track down the exact seat that goes to the toilet in our house.  They also had a generic one that was slightly cheaper.  Both were priced at over 200 GBP.

I suppose we could have gone to our landlord about this issue, but Bill is still quite shellshocked after dealing with our previous landlords.  Our current landlord has been very nice, respectful, and courteous, and we’d like for him to stay that way for as long as possible.  Besides, although all I was doing was using the seat in the way it was intended to be used– ie: sitting on it while I peed–, I wasn’t wanting to invite any lectures about how to use the toilet, especially since I’ve been using them for well over 40 years.

Bill ordered the original “brand name” version of the seat that goes to our toilet.  It took about two weeks to get to us, although the British supplier shipped it from a German affiliate.  After dinner last night, Bill set about trying to install it, which turned out to be quite an adventure.  It was pretty hard to get the bolts on the new seat lined up just right.  I was awkwardly trying to hold the lid up while Bill screwed, but he’d get to a point at which the screw would no longer turn.  I wished he’d brought his power screwdriver with him, but it’s 110 volts.  I guess it’s time to invest in one that can be used here.  There have been a couple of instances in which it would have come in handy.

This model is called the “Michaelangelo white”.  Given what it costs, I can see why.  It came with Phillips head screws, rather than the flathead screws that were on the original seat.

Bill was getting really frustrated, so I asked him to let me try the screwing.  Sure enough, this time, I was able to screw better than he was.  It’s not so often I can say that.  I managed to get the screw he’d been fighting all the way in, then got the other one most of the way until I had to let him take over, because his hands are stronger than mine are.  He finally got the second bolt screwed down tightly, and now our “designer” toilet is back in order.

Success!

I think our landlord recently installed new toilets in the other two bathrooms, because they are identical to each other and neither of them are shaped like this.  After this ordeal, I’m going to try to avoid using the rectangular seat.  I don’t want to tempt fate.  
Actually, I was kind of tempted to buy a washlet for the toilet, but with our luck, we’d never find one that fits properly.  For as much as we spent on that seat, we probably could have just replaced the whole thing.
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