The bathroom toilet is a sleek little unit. The previous owner slid it in under a permanent shelf. The fact that the toilet is under the shelf means that you can’t take the tank lid off without removing the entire toilet from its foundation donut-thingie.
Bloody hell, why did they think this was a good idea?!??
Yeah, something’s worn out in there causing it to trickle-leak unless you jiggle the handle over and over until it finally lands just right and forms a more effective seal. Be nice to be able to lift the tank lid and see if there’s something obvious that mere mortals could fix.
The socket, I think. The brass ones all have that cardboard sleeve, and once it loses integrity, there’s nothing to be done but replace it. The truly ridiculous bit, is that type is actually more expensive thanPorcelain.
I actually had this problem once. I gently tapped away the back lip of the tank cover with a ball peen hammer. You have to chip it away carefully, and it’s a mess to clean up, but if you do it right then you can just slide the cover forward like a drawer to put it off and on.
Then comes the fun of trying to reach things inside. I was wishing for an extra wrist in the middle of my forearm. LOL!
My mom’s bathroom has a toilet under a little shelf. Well, a continuation of the counter top. The guy who designed and installed it made the shelf so it could be easily lifted up and moved. Voila!
Is it an old, high-flow toilet? If so, your water utility may actually give you a rebate to swap it out for a low-flow one. If you have to take it off the ring, you could replace it with a shorter, low-flow one at that time.
Some things are hard to repair because they are complicated, and therefore are justifiably complicated to repair. But often the repair is complicated because the designer didn’t think about how it would be repaired. This toilet is an example of that. There are many things on cars which are also hard to repair because things unnecessarily block access to what you need to reach. What should be a simple fix takes hours longer because you have to dismantle a bunch of other stuff.
My 2007 Rabbit had headlight bulbs you could replace yourself easily enough. My 2010 Tiguan uses a similar bulbs, but they are inaccessible to the average owner. The shop charges $30 to replace them over and above the $15 cost of the bulb.
Keurigs.
I inherited one that wouldn’t power up. I figured I’d pull it apart, and take a look at the power supply (I can generally fix any product, and I have pretty much every tool known to man). I couldn’t even figure out how to disassemble the damn thing!
Near as I can tell, there are some screws deeply recessed in the innards somewhere that need to be unscrewed to get the guts to release from the shell.
I’ve replaced a couple of iphone batteries as well as a nexus 4 & 5 - it’s not as simple as just sliding the cover off, but it’s usually quite doable. You can pick up the tools on ebay or such for just a few $/£, and then it takes just a bit of care and patience. The biggest problem I’ve found is getting the cover off without gouging it - other than that, it’s just a case of a couple of screws and a ribbon cable. Fiddly, but straightforward.
The battery is nothin’. The screen, on the other hand…
I replaced a screen once. It was fascinating. Then I put it all back together. And realized that when I had replaced the screen part I had caught the ribbon cable, just a touch, so it didn’t quite reach.
Instead of retracing my steps for half an hour I tried to pull on it.
Then I brought a box of parts to the smartphone fixing people and slammed it down on the table nad paid them two hundred bucks.
I’m pretty good a fixing things, but getting a replacement sliding screen door to operate smoothly for any length of time has so far eluded me. Part of the problem is those crappy plastic wheels. I shit-can them right off and go with the better, solid ones. Also, every door in every Lowe’s and Home Depot is twisted to start with because of the tension of the screen.
Anyway, after spending hours to get it near perfect, within a day or two, my kid opens it about 7 inches and tries to bust through the not-nearly-big-enough gap, knocking the bottom off the tracks.
Yeah, sure - I’ve done plenty of batteries and screens in iPhones, iPads, iPods and MacBooks. But, that doesn’t mean they are designed to be user-replaceable!
A user-replaceable part generally means “no special tools” - so, not penta-lobe screwdriver that must be specifically purchased to bypass Apple’s express wishes that you stay out.
I’ve seriously thought about hacksawing through that portion of the shelf and putting in a piano hinge or something. I probably would except that even if I could peer down into the tank I’m not plumbing-proficient so there’s only a ~ 25% likelihood that I’d learn anything about the leak.
Naah, it’s a modern cutesy curvy water-efficient 1.0 GPF and about as short as you can make a tank toilet, aside from which it is a specific and unusual color of coral that matches the bathroom decor and any replacement would have to do likewise.
Not all Android phones are that simple. For instance, My Droid 4 requires untaping a plastic overwrap, undoing two torx-5 machine screws holding down the power lead, and gently prying the battery pack off of the very sticky double-sided tape holding the back of the battery to the chassis. And if you do this last step wrong, you rupture the battery and it catches fire. Yaaaay.
I’ve done it before, and I’ll have to do it again (stupid bloated battery), but it can be nerve-wracking.