Alysha from Birmingham Alabama is
writing on behalf of her husband who's
having a hard time changing out a toilet
seat a common problem I bet when you're
talking about toilet seats you got to
first understand if you're ordering a
new toilet seat which one to get there
are two choices one is around front it's
about 16 inches from back to front and
the other is elongated more elliptical
that's about 18 inches from back to fall
so pick the right one let's ride it what
do we do now change in our toilet so you
can either be the easiest or the
toughest job on a modern toilet seat
like this first of all you got to expose
where the top of the bolt is and so
there's usually a cover right here yeah
now a common mistake people make is to
put too small of a screwdriver up in
here and addy faces this bolt not hard
to do because the bolts plastic that's
right so you want a good generous blade
screwdriver up inside here and now it's
firm pressure facing down you want to go
counterclockwise now underneath there's
a nut and on the modern plastic nuts
they have wing nuts yeah it's like a
half wing lady so sometimes you can just
hold back with your hand like in that
case it came off easily so in this case
an easy job
that's right now sometimes those wing
nuts are all two-faced and they're
destroyed and you've got to get some
sort of wrench on it many times this
toilet is up against a bathtub a vanity
or a wall it's always a tight space
that's right so now it's much more
difficult to try and get in there with a
pair of pliers to hold back against you
because you can't really reach in there
okay so what do you do if you can't get
that wrench in a plumber might use this
this is called a basin wrench and it's a
wrench designed to get up inside of a
kite space up inside to be able to hold
back yep okay handy device to have and
there's also a another tool which is an
adjustable wrench that has a ratchet on
it that can fit right up inside there
and tight now sort of a crescent wrench
on a 90 degree angle but usually you can
get these plastic bolts out of there the
challenge comes when you've got an older
toilet seat like this this has got a
brass hinge bolts metal hardware here
right and over time down the bottom the
nut at the bottom can become corroded
mm-hmm so what you attempt to do would
be to get the right deep socket on there
and just to back it off and generally
that'll work
give it some persuasion right now
sometimes you might put some penetrating
oil and wait for a little
just to see if it can break down the
corrosion yeah and if you can't well
sooner or later you might reach the time
we have to cut this bolt off now you
want to cut this bolt off using some
sort of hack so this is a mini hacksaw
blade holder yeah and when you want to
cut this bolt right here but you don't
want it to face the China yeah sort of
defeats the purpose as far that out so
what I would do is use some broad knife
or a putty knife and now I'm just going
to make nice steady strokes in there so
I don't wreck the China and use a knife
to protect the China that's right okay
so a little bit of work but that to
hopefully I'll do the trick
yeah I'll be here if you need me all
right thank you Richard