That new toilet you measured for the showroom, not your bathroom
You picked out a toilet at a home center in Springfield or ordered one online, and it looked fine in the box. Then you got it home to your place in Republic and it either won't sit right against the wall or the tank bumps into the towel bar. This happens constantly, and it almost always traces back to one number nobody checked before the order went through: the rough-in measurement.
The rough-in is the distance from the finished wall behind the toilet to the center of the drain pipe on the floor. It's not the same as the distance to the edge of the baseboard, and it's not something you can guess by eye. Get it wrong and you end up with a toilet that either won't bolt down flush or sticks out so far it fights with the door swing.
Why this matters more in older Republic homes
A lot of housing stock around Republic dates from different building eras, from older farmhouses near the square to ranch homes built in the 60s and 70s to newer construction out toward the edges of town. Each era tended to favor slightly different plumbing standards. The 12-inch rough-in is the most common one you'll run into, but older homes, especially anything built before wide adoption of that standard, can have 10-inch or 14-inch rough-ins instead.
If your home has had any plumbing work done over the decades, which is common given how many houses here have gone through additions or bathroom remodels, there's a real chance the rough-in doesn't match what the original builder installed. Slab foundations, common in this part of Missouri, also mean the drain location is fixed in concrete. You're not moving it without real demolition.
More on this from Reading List Rough In Measurements To Take Before A Toilet Is Ordered.
What you can measure yourself before ordering
Flush the existing toilet, then measure from the wall behind it, not the baseboard trim, to the center of the two bolt caps at the base. That number is your rough-in. Round to the nearest whole number, since it's rarely going to land on an exact fraction.
While you're at it, measure the width of the space between any side walls or fixtures, and the distance from the floor to the bottom of any window or fixture that hangs down nearby, like a windowsill common in the older homes near downtown Republic. Toilet tanks vary in height more than people expect, and a low window can turn into a real problem after the fact.
Check the shutoff valve location too. If it's positioned for a specific toilet's water line connection, a new model with a different tank shape might not line up with the same ease.
Where humidity and temperature swings come into it
Southwest Missouri gets a real mix of weather across the year, humid summers, cold snaps in winter, and a lot of swings in between. That matters for a bathroom retrofit because wax ring seals and wood subfloors respond to moisture and temperature changes over time. A subfloor that's been through twenty or thirty years of humid summers near Republic may have settled or softened slightly around the flange, which can throw off your rough-in measurement by a fraction of an inch compared to what the original blueprint says.
If the floor around the base of the old toilet feels soft, springy, or discolored when you pull it up, that's not a rough-in issue anymore. That's water damage, and it needs to be dealt with before any new toilet goes in, regardless of what the measurements say.
When it's still a simple swap and when it isn't
If your measurements come back close to a standard 12-inch rough-in, and the floor underneath is solid, and the shutoff valve is in reasonable shape, swapping out an old toilet for a new one is a manageable weekend project for a lot of homeowners. Wax ring, new bolts, careful leveling, done.
Where it stops being a do-it-yourself job is when the rough-in doesn't match anything sold off the shelf, when the flange itself is cracked or sitting below the finished floor level, or when there's any sign of rot or moisture damage in the subfloor. Those situations call for a plumber, because fixing the flange or subfloor incorrectly leads to leaks that show up months later, often in the ceiling of whatever room sits below the bathroom. That's a much bigger and more expensive repair than getting the toilet order right the first time.