Need potty training how-to's and how gross would this be?

Yesterday, the day care left coupons for pull-ups in the kids' bins. I knew that they were putting them on the potty, and I knew that the diaper pile wasn't going down very fast, but every time I tried to talk about it with the boys (27 mos) at home, I got massive resistance. "We're going to start learning to use the potty!" "No." "Don't you want to wear pull-ups or underwear like the big boys?" "No." "Big boys make pee-pee and poo-poo in the potty!" "No." I didn't want to set us up for failure, but when I chatted up their teacher, she said they were using the potty. As usual, they've been playing me.

At around 18 mos., we started with the potty seat, but it became mostly a ploy to get into the Forbidden Bathroom, and I started being stricter about behavior and their interest waned, along with my patience. I have been slogging our way out of a number of regressive behaviors in the wake of a period of illnesses, one of DH's parents is terminally ill and the other needs assisted living, and I had planned to put potty training after getting rid of bottles. But if day care is forging on, I definitely want to be working with them, not against them.

So, this morning I bought our first pull-ups and took some to the day care. It is going to be a major PIA to interrupt fixing dinner to put them on the potty, but about 45 min-hour after coming home is usually when they make a poo.

Soooo, at bedtime, though, I should put them in regular diapers? This morning I put them on the potty, but they didn't make their poos; probably too early. Trying to intercept Bob's poo is going to be tricky; sometimes he already has a poo when I come to his crib, other times it's 30-45 min. Fred is more consistently about 45 min-hr. I'll accept any and all advice.

As for the question about gross, I bought two First Years (I think) combo step-stools and potties second-hand. The outsides were fairly clean, but let's just say I would have cleaned up the insides more to Freecycle something, never mind sell. I'm thinking of putting them in the dishwasher. But is that too disgusting? I mean, everything should get sterilized.

Maggie (in VA)