One of life’s great mysteries is ‘who broke the toilet seat?’ Of course this is one of those questions that has no answer because despite the fact that toilet seats get broken all the time, no one will ever, ever own up to it. Of course when this happened in my house I was happy to be the nominated person to replace the toilet seat. I’ve done this before and it took about ten minutes. Turns out not as simple as it used to be.

Most old school seats just unscrew, you screw the new one in quite easily and they have universal fixings. However, if you find yourself in this situation with a modern seat with concealed fixings, like I did with the Bathstore Euro Mono, here are a few handy tips.

When faced with this do not panic. Just order a replacement part from the Bathstore website and it will arrive the next day. Assume that the fitting instructions will give you a clue how to remove the broken fitting.

Do not despair when the part arrives (in a designated one hour slot) with no instructions as there is always a handy video on YouTube to help. We used this one to show us how it goes on and worked out how to take it off.

Top tip from my Dad: Before you start work put and old towel or cloth in the pan in case you drop something. I cannot stress how many times I dropped my screwdriver. This is very good advice (you can look at other projects I’ve done with my dad here and here)

Top tip from me: Keep wiping down with disinfectant and wear rubber gloves, no matter how much your toilet gets cleaned you’re going to encounter icky stuff.

Now you’re ready to lever off the silver cover and unscrew the fixing underneath, use a flat head screw driver to raise the fitting and create tension otherwise you’ll be turning for hours.

Once it’s all off place the new rubber fitting on top and drop the screws into place. When trying to drop the fixings into the holes make sure the wingnut are sat correctly or you’ll never get it in.

Now you’re ready to screw into place and fit the silver cover on top. Tahdah!

All that is left to do is slip the easy fix toilet seat back on. Oh, unless it was bought seven years ago as that won’t fit because either you’ve broken something taking it out or the fixings have changed!

As we are moving house soon I didn’t want to have to buy a new £50 soft close seat like the last one so chose a slightly cheaper version in the same style secure in the knowledge that it was compatible.

So, order a new toilet seat which is definitely compatible and uses the same fitting, look here’s the spare at the bottom of the page!

Realise its Friday so the seat won’t come until Monday. Have a weekend of cold bottoms.

(no appropriate photo for this I’m afraid)

Monday, and the new seat is delivered! Here’s the obligatory gurning photo…

But wait a minute, the fixings don’t even remotely match!

Luckily, this seat came with instructions which are super simple.

So, what is the main thing I’ve learnt from this exercise? Well, the cheaper the toilet seat the easier it is to replace.

Bye, bye cold bums!

(that’s our bums, I’m not calling you a cold bum, that would be rude.)