Remember the almond-colored toilet that came with our master bedroom (which we recently swapped out for a taller, cleaner-looking white model)? For a while the old almond one—oddly appearing almost white in the photo below—just sat in our entryway. That’s not that weird, right?
We decided to try selling it on Craigslist. When John discovered it was originally an over $1,300 Kohler toilet, he figured someone out there might want an upscale almond fixture. You’d be surprised what people buy online these days. A few days later we sold it—for $80. A very sweet family (a dad with two boys and a baby girl) picked it up after work one evening. It felt surprisingly good to know the toilet went to a home that would use it. The funniest moment: as they drove away, Clara waved at them and declared, “I go in car too!” Apparently she liked the new family and the toilet so much she wanted to go with them.
We originally planned to use the $80 from the sale as a small credit toward our new $88 toilet. Then we learned about a local family—a single mom, Chevelle, with six children—who is being helped by Habitat for Humanity. For a $100 donation, Habitat could provide them with a toilet for their soon-to-be-built home.
We decided to donate the $80 from the Craigslist sale plus $20 of our own money to buy the toilet for Chevelle’s family. Habitat does great work and we’re happy to support them. With that taken care of, back to the bathroom project: next up, trimming the bottom of the bathroom door.
You may remember we mentioned the bathroom door needed to be trimmed so it could open fully instead of catching on the floor vent. Not only was it annoying that the door wouldn’t open all the way, but it also prevented us from using a bath mat—the door would bunch it up as it hit the floor. That left a wet puddle of bathwater in front of the tub every day, right where you step out and right in front of the toilet. Even if it’s clean water, stepping into puddles or walking around in wet socks is never fun.
This week’s door-trimming update also served as our “Dude, get on that already” challenge—how had we not done this sooner?
Fixing it was straightforward. First we removed the door by unscrewing the hinge screws, taking care to have two people hold it so it wouldn’t fall. Then we carried it out to the patio where we’d set up a table saw.
John guided the door along the saw while I fed it slowly into the blade to get a clean cut across the bottom. (Update: we later learned a safer method for cutting doors—safety first.)
We removed roughly a third to a half inch so the door would clear both the floor vent and the low-profile bath mat we planned to add.
I sanded the new edge to smooth any roughness before rehanging the door, since it would be hard to sand that area once the door was back in place.
About thirty minutes later we rehung the door using the same hinge screws we’d removed earlier.
Hooray—the door now clears the vent. We still need a few touch-up paint strokes along the bottom edge, but it already looks much better.
Next, I added a small doorstop at the bottom corner to prevent the towel hooks on the back of the door from banging into the artwork on the adjacent wall.
Here’s our updated bathroom to-do list:
paint the walls to add contrastreplace the overhead lightpaint the cream trim whitehang bathroom-friendly artsell the old toilet and install a classic white oneadd privacy treatment to the windowreplace the cluttered shower caddyremove the door, shave the bottom, and add a doorstop- finally buy a bath mat
- replace the border tile around the room (possibly Phase 2)
- move the blue pendant light to center it in front of the window (Phase 2)
- replace the floor tile to break up the expanse (definitely Phase 2)
John and I are still deciding when to tackle the Phase 2 items like replacing the border tile and rehanging the pendant. We’ll share a full Phase One budget breakdown if we delay those larger projects. But enough about us—what about you? Have you ever sold or bought a secondhand toilet? Trimmed a door? We’d love to hear about it.
Psst—To follow this bathroom refresh from the beginning, check the earlier posts that documented our planning, painting, light swaps, trim work, toilet update, and window frosting projects.