My house came with 3 Sterling toilets. 2 of them had the cheap stock seats that slam when you let go of them, and one of them had a fancy Kohler Bidet toilet seat.

Yes, just the seat had the Bidet functionality, not the toilet itself, which made the seat very massive and bulky, and essentially turned an elongated bowl into a round seat because of all the gear in the back.

My goal was to replace all 3 seats with soft close ones. The bidet seat has soft close, but we weren’t interested in keeping it because of the bulkiness.

Originally I got Delta soft close seats since they were crazy highly rated: https://www.amazon.com/Faucet-801903-WH-Slow-Close-Non-Slip-Bumpers/dp/B015Z4BH34

But the tank cover on the Sterling toilets is so wide that they were pushing the Delta seat forward, so it couldn’t stay up! I also didn’t like that the screws were plastic. I’m not sure why they’re so highly rated on Amazon. No photos of this unfortunately 🙁

Anyway, I did a bit more research and settled on these 3

Changing out non-fancy bidet toilet seats is super easy. You just need GIANT screw drivers…a 3/8 inch slotted and a #3 Philips.

The 3/8 inch 6-8 inch shank slotted screw drivers are actually being marketed as “demolition screwdrivers” these days because they are super durable and really good at prying. They are better than pry bars in a lot of cases and can be hammered. Anyway, I’m rambling now…

Here’s the new Kohler soft close.

There’s a little trick here which is to make sure the under-seat screw nuts have their long tails facing the wall. This makes it easier to unscrew the toilet seat.

The bigger project here is changing out the Kohler Bidet seat with one of the Bath Royale seats. Yes, Bath Royale! That’s an actual company! And they make good toilet seats!

Most of the difficulty in this project is the fact that these fancy bidet seats have a custom water supply line.

So our main objective is to remove the plastic supply lines and the T valve connected to the tank.

While I could’ve chosen to keep the plastic supply line connected to the valve on the wall, I wanted to use a the same lines that were on the other toilets, which was a flexible stainless steel supply line.

Getting the tools ready

I made sure to pick up a stop valve as well, in case I needed to replace that too.

Honestly, I got lazy and didn’t end up doing that part, because I was already going long and didn’t want to take longer. Replacing this part would’ve involved turning off the water to the house. In case you’re reading this and ever need to take on that project, though, just keep that in mind. Also keep in mind the sizes listed here.

1/2 in comp inlet means the compression fitting to the pipe (inlet = water going in) 3/8 in comp outlet means the compression fitting to the supply line (outlet = water going out) 1/4 turn is just a style thing. It means you turn the valve a quarter circle to stop or release the flow

Moving on, my first order of business was actually to clean things, since the ground was filthy and my bucket was filthy!

You have to turn the water off at the valve to change the supply line, so I did that and flushed the toilet to remove the excess water and pressure.

I’m going to admit a dumb mistake here. That angle stop is NOT turned all the way. I found this out the hard way. Since this isn’t a project I’ve done before, I didn’t realize that the fill valve in the toilet should NOT have kept doing work. I put a zip tie on the fill valve to stop it and got out this cup to dump some of the water. Ugh.

Anyway, after being quite a moron for a while, I realized I just needed to actually close the valve by twisting it all the way

Also, since I had to look inside the tank, I noticed a bunch of these little plastic dingleberries. I went ahead and cleaned those out using a giant sponge. Giant sponges are magic.

OK, now that the water is ACTUALLY off, time to loosen all the fittings without getting squirted. Now it’s time to remove the behemoth, starting by loosening the plastic nuts under the seat.

You’ll see me use dishwashing gloves on almost every job. They are crazy useful. They are basically a rubber grip on your fingertips and are the best tool at loosening tight glass, metal, and plastic fittings. I use these things to open jars as well. Such a mundane household item, but one of the most useful for handy work!

Look at how gross this was underneath, this is part of the reason why we’re getting rid of it - hard to clean.

Time to install the new supply line. Not pictured: use a wrench to tighten the connection at the valve. Hand tightening at the tank is all you need, actually don’t use a wrench for that!

Installing the fancy bath royale seat with my giant screw driver.

Instructions say to get the spacing between the posts 4 and 5/8 inches apart. That’s probably the “biggest” downside to this seat. The kohler soft close was brain dead simple - just screw it on.

Biggest upside is that the seat comes right off and makes it super easy to clean the bowl itself. There’s a little button in the back to release it.

Just finishing touches after this

And then…