The light at the end of the tunnel just burned out

As you can see by the post below, the installation of our new light fixture marked the end of the half-bath renovation. Or should I say, it SHOULD have marked the end of it. Until this morning. At about 1:30 am, I woke up to the sound of what could only be described as a plate smashing against a floor. Worried that the cats might have been up to no good, I got up to investigate, only to hear the sound of water pouring onto the floor. I ran into our master bathroom, nothing. So I headed into the newly renovated half bathroom and this is what I found...



See that dark line, yeah well that is one of 2 very large cracks in the tank of the toilet. The second one is in the back. By the time I managed to turn off the valve and flush the toilet to empty the tank, there was already a sizeable puddle on the floor. What I would like to know is what on earth would make a tank crack like that? There was nothing on the lid except for a spare roll of toilet paper. And although the house was a little chilly last night, I didn't think it was cold enough to warrant this. It's not like the water froze in there or anything. One interesting piece of information I found was a date stamp on the inside of the lid - Dec 1973. So after 35+ years, can a toilet suddenly decide to just burst at the seams, literally. I'm just thankful that this didn't happen last weekend while were gone!

So now I'm hoping we can find a replacement tank, cause I don't want to have to replace the whole toilet. And patching the cracks isn't really an option. I'm sure over time they'd just leak again anyway.

Silly me, here I thought the renovations were complete, especially after replacing the light fixture (which was not fun since we had to retro-fit an electrical box that the previous owners didn't think was necessary in order to safely secure a wall fixture.) This leaves me wondering if we should have just gutted the room entirely and started from scratch!