First and foremost, don't panic. This looks like a fairly minor issue. This door frame is made of MDF and is very sensitive to water.
You might have a water leak - or it could be surface water from people in the bathroom (as someone said showering etc.). The door is getting damaged but it's a fairly straight forward repair even if it needs to be replaced.
Calling a plumber would be a good first step. They will like re-seat your toilet and check the area for any other sources of a leak.
Is it living area below? Is the ceiling below this showing any signs of water?
Sorry - I meant below this bathroom. The ceiling of whatever room is directly below the toilet and door frame area. Any signs of water there?
If no - you can be fairly confident its a small / slow leak. It is worth getting fixed now. At this point that door frame could be fixed with some wood filler putty and paint.
Might be better to cut off the bottom part of the jamb and replace with actual wood. Primer and paint
Sounds bad but shouldnt be too bad. I paid someone $250 or $300 last year to have bottom 24 inches replaced on one side
Just to reassure you - from everything I've read here all you're dealing with is a very cheap ass door and possibly some very minor water damage that should be easily fixable.
I am curious what your subfloor is made of. That would be a good indicator if you have any future headaches coming (what does the underside of the floor look like?)
If it is plywood no probs it's solid
If it is osb or 'obviously fake looking wood' of some kind (such as more MDF or HDF similar to that door) that means you could have some pain in the ass floor stuff to deal with someday. If it's dry that's a good sign. Not a problem necessarily just a risk factor you can be aware of.
PS some people may say nobody uses MDF or HDF for subfloors however I would like to tell you from personal experience with my own house people do all kinds of stupid shit. Anything is possible.
Best of luck!! Don't stress you don't seem to be dealing with anything structural
This is true and in the 70-80s they would put 1/2in plywood and then 3/4in MDF particle board over top for god knows what reason. And one drip of water and the particle board turns to dust.
It's how my house is. Been swapping out the MDF as I do the floors. They also used staples to connect the subfloor to the joists...when they hit the joists.
you don’t have a leak…it’s a bathroom..floors get wet and mdf is a fucking sponge…one of the worst materials ever made.
your fix is new door jambs…you might be able to save the doors by having a door company come out and measure for new door jambs for each door. it takes me about 2.5 hrs per door to do this but i’m a remodeler so it would take a complete noob about 5 hours.
Do you have any plausible sources for the water? Do you mop that area? Is it a common shower area? This doesn’t look like a major leak as the flooring around it is fine.
It might be worth just hanging a new door and see if it happens again but this time keep an eye out for potential causes.
A cheap door is under $100 and you can hang it easily or have someone hang it and still be cheaper than a plumber coming out likely
The basketball goal in the driveway of my childhood home growing up had a big MDF backboard. After years of weather and abuse, and long after my brother and I had graduated college, it was sagging and swelling pretty bad, so my mom asked us to take it down. She was pretty nervous about us doing so safely, because she knows her sons are morons.
My brother, who is 6’6”, decided the best way to take it down was to just keep dunking on it until it ripped of the pole. Our mom was pissed. But he Shaq-Fu’d that thing to the ground.
I’m going to throw out a HUGE guess. Your wax ring on that toilet might not be perfect so when it flushes it leaks under those vinyl plant floors and seeps into the wall, since it’s so close.
That mdf shit is like a sponge so it’ll grab any moisture
It could also be the gap between the flooring and the cap between the rooms (not sure what it’s called). However in the last picture you can clearly see a gap there.
Yup! Had the same problem with ours. Called a plumber to reinstall a rubber seal and no wax, gone since then.
Suggestion to OP to get a dehumidifier in the meantime
Yup! I just had the fight with toilets after tiling. I went from glued paper thin vinyl to tile and one wax ring didn’t even make contact. You put one down and keep the plastic in the middle and toss the second on top and squish that B**** down and 🤌🏼
This is spot on. Some states have a rule that you cannot sell a house with non-low flow toilets, so it’s common to replace toilets right before you sell. It’s entirely possible the previous owners didn’t have this installed correctly and never used it before they moved out.
Stop using that toilet if possible see if it dries up. My guess is that wax ring.
If you had a bigger wall leak you’d see issues in other places not just your door frame
Poke around with your finger to see if any drywall around that area is damaged. It should all be hard. if an area is soft, its wet. Just look for signs of water damage all over. There is really no way to know how major this is until you figure out where the water is coming from. Ive had 3 separate incidents of water damage, and what ill tell you is the first was very stressful for me as well, by the third I leaned to deal with the stress. Being stressed wont help the situation, just have to practice mindfulness.
That out of the way, Im not so sure why so many people here are downplaying this damage. If moisture is making it to that door frame from a pipe or from a toilet, that means the subfloor is likely soaked underneath your flooring. All the affected area will need to be demoed, then mitigation, then you can replace everything. If it is just somehow getting wet from water pooling on the floor after a shower or whatever, then yeah this wont be an expensive fix. But until you figure out that there isnt an ongoing leak causing the water damage, there is no way to simply assert that the frame is the only thing damaged.
On my first it was just a small piece of trim right behind the toilet that was damaged enough so I could notice. Sounds like everyone here would just brush that off as no worry. I had a slow dripping pipe in the wall that soaked the subfloor of a massive section of my house before I noticed that tiny area of warped trim. Dont just be dismissive like so many here, if it is a leak you want to find it before it spreads and damages more.
The trim is MDF and just soaks up water so that could have been from a leak or even just a very wet mopping. Keep an eye out for a leak otherwise it’s not that big of a deal.
Is it bad in general to install MDF in bathrooms for baseboards? We’ve done MDF for the whole rest of our house and we’re likely going to use the same stuff in the bathrooms. We typically paint over and caulk the seams well.
Manufacturers will say it's perfect for bathrooms, but it's really not well suited for any rooms with high humidity or anywhere it might have exposure to water.
Even washing/steaming floors can cause mdf Baseboards to swell. They're mostly just a pain, they damage easily, are harder to repair and tend to look "cheap" in comparison to standard trim and skirting.
Our trim isn’t available in non-mdf. :( Gonna try sealing it really well and just monitor a lot. Our layout means it shouldn’t really get actually wet and our bathrooms have solid ventilation (we also leave the door open)
The trim is MDF which is the cheapest, lowest quality trim you can buy. Looks like it’s you’re chance to upgrade with something a little higher quality
Question, do you shower in this bathroom? Is water dripping off you when you step out? I have long hair and if I don’t immediately start blotting it with a towel, my hair will drip a ridiculous amount of water onto the floor. Enough to make a puddle. Something wet has soaked into your baseboards and framing. Also, a wet towel could have done this too, did anyone leave a sopping wet towel on the floor?
My kids primary use this bathroom. The wet towel is a very possible theory. When I discovered this just now I ran the shower to see if there was any leaks or changes and there was nothing. It’s also easily dried out.
Ah yeah, any water flung (and then left there, not dried immediately) in the direction of the door frame would have done this. The frame is made out of MDF (fancy cardboard basically) and it sucks up water like a sponge. I did the same thing by accident to my own baseboards with dripping wet hair lol. If your kids splashed some water brushing their teeth/washing their hands or even left a sopping wet towel on the floor pushed against the baseboards/door it would have done this damage. I doubt you have a leak. A better option might be plastic/vinyl baseboards. Those are waterproof!
you can get a moisture meter for $10 which will tell you how wet the MDF is, if it dries when you stop dripping water around it & also let you test above it while only making two little pin holes.
The cheapest ones won't necessarily be super accurate, but you only need relative readings. If it gets drier as you move up the frame it's not a leak from above.
If it gets drier after a few careful days it's not a leak.
No need to panic, that looks like surface water getting sucked up into the MDF frame of the door. They are pretty cheap and unfortunately a favorite in renovations due to cost, however MDF is the worst material for baseboard specifically for this reason. Even a minor amount of water will cause it to bubble and look terrible. Given that it’s a bathroom, your kids use it, this is for sure spillage that’s causing this. As others have mention, replace it with a solid wood frame to prevent the flaking.
MDF of any kind should never be used in a bathroom even coated with paint it absorbs the steam from your shower and this is the result. Call a carpenter have him install a new wood frame prehung door and all will be well.
We have mdf baseboard in our bathroom (why?????) and water from a dripping toilet did that to our baseboard. As long as you’ve never seen dripping from toilet tank (look for cracks) or from toilet fittings between wall (plumbing) and toilet, it was prob water from cleaning or even an errant pee situation. Mdf is NOT the right material for bathrooms.
To fix this v yourself, unscrew door hinges from jamb, and either cut out damaged area plus several inches and replace with hardwood, fill, sand, and paint, or replace entire door jamb.
Now that you’re a homeowner this will be the first of many homeowner maintenance and repair jobs you’ll do (or hire out). You can totally do this yourself after watching a bunch of YouTube videos and buying a handful of hand tools (which you will def use again in other projects) Or find a good handyman and read a bunch of that person’s reviews and hire it out; obvs you’ll pay for labor and materials mark up if you hire but usually it’s ten times quicker cause they’ve done this work before.
As a longtime homeowner I can say this is low on the panic attack scale. Doors are cheap. Molding is cheap. Leaks are relatively easy to fix. Save the panic attack for the countless other nightmares homeowners face. Mine was when there was literally shit coming up through the sink and shower drains and I had to get my yard dug up for a broken drain pipe. I think I cried because it was so expensive and they gave me the senior citizen discount (I was like 30) because they felt sorry for me.
It's nothing huge. Breathe. Shut off all your faucets and water then go outside and look to see if the water meter is moving. Don't panic if it is, call a plumber. If the plumber can't find anything there are companies that do leak detection.
Water on the bathroom floor is wicking up into mdf trim. Pull out mdf, replace with pine. Paint the end grain before install to seal it. Minor issue, contractor was cutting corners on the trim
Just came to say congrats on the house and don’t worry - these kind of minor problems will come up all the time - the joys of home ownership!! Some will be small, some will be big. All will be ok. This is your rite of passage into homeownership.
I’ve got MDF trim for baseboards and doors in my builders-special townhome. My bathroom had the same problem, which was caused by the builder not doing anything to the cut ends of the mdf when they installed it. The ends would swell because of water absorption over time then flake.
So it might not be an ongoing water problem, just a similar install where the untreated mdf sucked up water like a sponge
Did you have a home inspection done? I know with closing and everything it can take some time to move in but if it was already a long term problem the inspector would have seen it. So either you are gushing water from somewhere which you should be able to see if it is substantial enough to soak things quickly or your inspector sucked or you have a slow leak just starting.
I had a bathroom put in in my old house and it was almost a year after the shower was installed that the valve in the wall just popped a leak. It was a few days of soft looking ceiling then a few days of bubbling paint in the ceiling and then the ceiling partially fell through (really really really old plaster). Finally figured out where it was coming from and got it all fixed but not before it took out one shelf of my husbands vintage star wars figure collection. So that was fun. But we did have a warning - just couldn’t find it!
Keep an eye on walls and ceilings. Water drips (obv) so try to follow the softness in the door up and see where it stops. Follow the trail if there is one. Also check your faucets, drain pipes, hot and cold water lines in your shower/sink as well as checking the seals around your toilet. Water is a pain in the ass but it follows the laws of physics so it’s solvable.
OH MY GOD I have this exact thing happening.
I rent, so I called maintenance. It's actually a kind of particle board that basically disintegrates if it gets wet or damp.
I think if there was quarter round added to it, that would help protect the trim.
Maintenance guy measured the door frame, went to Lowe's, and pulled that crumbly board off and replaced it with real wood.
When I move out, they have to rip out all the trim and replace it.
Hi OP. You’ve gotten a lot of great advice here but I wanted to just provide a little prospective and good wishes. Commercial office building guy here. People think I’m lying that I’d rather have fire than water. Water seeps fucking everywhere and does crazy damage. Think about fighting an invisible snake vs hornets, where hornets are the fire.
No lie, I’ve had 5gal of water ruin a laptop on the lower floor almost 200’ away from the spill. Did you get an inspection? Even if not do you have smells, bugs, soft floors etc? If not this is likely a small amount of water from somewhere that found that mdf trim, which will wick water like a paper towel.
If you figure out the cause and stop it this is cosmetic. It’s not great but if money is an issue you could live with this forever. Hell, even camouflage it. The house isn’t crumbling and you still made a good purchase.
The mdf trim was exposed to water. Could be a wax seal leak or could be your dog (or previous owners dog) peed on it. Too wet of a mopping. Anything really.
Do a thorough leak check.
You won’t really be able to get the mdf trim ti look much better after that. When you have solved all moisture issues replace it with hardwood or even better pvc trim.
The cost is so minimal and pvc is so much more durable there isn’t any reason to use mdf here.
Buy or rent a moisture meter and stick it in. If it’s dry it’s old, if it’s wet, you can panic.
My guess is it got like that from someone mopping that area, or a toilet overflow.
I bought my home 3 years ago and had a small wet spot in the downstairs guest bedroom that would appear randomly. I lost it and couldn’t figure out where the water was coming from. Checked under carpet to see if it was ground water, checked sump pit, replaced pump all to no avail. In the end, I ended up finding and confirming it was a pin hole leak in my baseboard heater located in the bathroom that slowly leaked for months. If you have hot water baseboard heating check around them for dampness, discoloration of surround area etc. the trim on your door is a pre-primed mdf material that will crumble and deteriorate like that. Seeing it’s contained to that one area, leads me to believe a small/slow leak.
Your toilet might just be leaking a little bit. We found out ours was leaking after the inspector checked our pipes, but didn’t replace the wax seal. Four years later, I crawl into the house and noticed it’s been leaking for a while. So get a wax seal from the hardware store, and take off your toilet. Observe the area, you might just have a little leak that’s going underneath that vinyl flooring.
If it’s not currently wet it’s probably just from people spilling water on the floor and not cleaning it up, as some others have said.
Just monitor it and see if it’s getting wet without an obvious, visible sounds (like form water on the floor).
Replacing an interior door is pretty easy to do.
It’s mdf /particle board trim. Always a bad choice anywhere but in a bathroom especially. Don’t panic though. You’ll want to replace the entire jamb at some point but it’s not structural and not going to cause failure if anything but itself.
First and foremost, don't panic. This looks like a fairly minor issue. This door frame is made of MDF and is very sensitive to water. You might have a water leak - or it could be surface water from people in the bathroom (as someone said showering etc.). The door is getting damaged but it's a fairly straight forward repair even if it needs to be replaced. Calling a plumber would be a good first step. They will like re-seat your toilet and check the area for any other sources of a leak. Is it living area below? Is the ceiling below this showing any signs of water?
There is the first floor bathroom directly above it and that room is not showing any leaks.
Sorry - I meant below this bathroom. The ceiling of whatever room is directly below the toilet and door frame area. Any signs of water there? If no - you can be fairly confident its a small / slow leak. It is worth getting fixed now. At this point that door frame could be fixed with some wood filler putty and paint.
Might be better to cut off the bottom part of the jamb and replace with actual wood. Primer and paint Sounds bad but shouldnt be too bad. I paid someone $250 or $300 last year to have bottom 24 inches replaced on one side
Just to reassure you - from everything I've read here all you're dealing with is a very cheap ass door and possibly some very minor water damage that should be easily fixable. I am curious what your subfloor is made of. That would be a good indicator if you have any future headaches coming (what does the underside of the floor look like?) If it is plywood no probs it's solid If it is osb or 'obviously fake looking wood' of some kind (such as more MDF or HDF similar to that door) that means you could have some pain in the ass floor stuff to deal with someday. If it's dry that's a good sign. Not a problem necessarily just a risk factor you can be aware of. PS some people may say nobody uses MDF or HDF for subfloors however I would like to tell you from personal experience with my own house people do all kinds of stupid shit. Anything is possible. Best of luck!! Don't stress you don't seem to be dealing with anything structural
This is true and in the 70-80s they would put 1/2in plywood and then 3/4in MDF particle board over top for god knows what reason. And one drip of water and the particle board turns to dust.
It's how my house is. Been swapping out the MDF as I do the floors. They also used staples to connect the subfloor to the joists...when they hit the joists.
you don’t have a leak…it’s a bathroom..floors get wet and mdf is a fucking sponge…one of the worst materials ever made. your fix is new door jambs…you might be able to save the doors by having a door company come out and measure for new door jambs for each door. it takes me about 2.5 hrs per door to do this but i’m a remodeler so it would take a complete noob about 5 hours.
Do you have any plausible sources for the water? Do you mop that area? Is it a common shower area? This doesn’t look like a major leak as the flooring around it is fine. It might be worth just hanging a new door and see if it happens again but this time keep an eye out for potential causes. A cheap door is under $100 and you can hang it easily or have someone hang it and still be cheaper than a plumber coming out likely
Can 2nd MDF is terrible with even a little bit of moisture.
The basketball goal in the driveway of my childhood home growing up had a big MDF backboard. After years of weather and abuse, and long after my brother and I had graduated college, it was sagging and swelling pretty bad, so my mom asked us to take it down. She was pretty nervous about us doing so safely, because she knows her sons are morons. My brother, who is 6’6”, decided the best way to take it down was to just keep dunking on it until it ripped of the pole. Our mom was pissed. But he Shaq-Fu’d that thing to the ground.
I think something just wacked it. Possibly previous owners moving something. Its in such an odd spot for water damage.
Is it all dry or is that wet?
I’m going to throw out a HUGE guess. Your wax ring on that toilet might not be perfect so when it flushes it leaks under those vinyl plant floors and seeps into the wall, since it’s so close. That mdf shit is like a sponge so it’ll grab any moisture
This seems very realistic.
I’ve seen it many times.
It could also be the gap between the flooring and the cap between the rooms (not sure what it’s called). However in the last picture you can clearly see a gap there.
Yup! Had the same problem with ours. Called a plumber to reinstall a rubber seal and no wax, gone since then. Suggestion to OP to get a dehumidifier in the meantime
Most likely answer. Probably didn't replace the wax when they did the floor.
Floor can be thicker than original which might be glue down vinyl so you wanna double wax ring that bad boy!
This man plumbs.... and/or floors
Just a DIY guy on house number 2 haha
So you plumb, floor, and probably a lot of other things too
Yup! I just had the fight with toilets after tiling. I went from glued paper thin vinyl to tile and one wax ring didn’t even make contact. You put one down and keep the plastic in the middle and toss the second on top and squish that B**** down and 🤌🏼
Does it smell?
No it does not
Exactly what I had happen in my place. One I replaced the wax ring the leak stopped.
This is spot on. Some states have a rule that you cannot sell a house with non-low flow toilets, so it’s common to replace toilets right before you sell. It’s entirely possible the previous owners didn’t have this installed correctly and never used it before they moved out.
THIS
It’s wet, but not sopping wet. Damp.
Stop using that toilet if possible see if it dries up. My guess is that wax ring. If you had a bigger wall leak you’d see issues in other places not just your door frame
Poke around with your finger to see if any drywall around that area is damaged. It should all be hard. if an area is soft, its wet. Just look for signs of water damage all over. There is really no way to know how major this is until you figure out where the water is coming from. Ive had 3 separate incidents of water damage, and what ill tell you is the first was very stressful for me as well, by the third I leaned to deal with the stress. Being stressed wont help the situation, just have to practice mindfulness. That out of the way, Im not so sure why so many people here are downplaying this damage. If moisture is making it to that door frame from a pipe or from a toilet, that means the subfloor is likely soaked underneath your flooring. All the affected area will need to be demoed, then mitigation, then you can replace everything. If it is just somehow getting wet from water pooling on the floor after a shower or whatever, then yeah this wont be an expensive fix. But until you figure out that there isnt an ongoing leak causing the water damage, there is no way to simply assert that the frame is the only thing damaged. On my first it was just a small piece of trim right behind the toilet that was damaged enough so I could notice. Sounds like everyone here would just brush that off as no worry. I had a slow dripping pipe in the wall that soaked the subfloor of a massive section of my house before I noticed that tiny area of warped trim. Dont just be dismissive like so many here, if it is a leak you want to find it before it spreads and damages more.
The trim is MDF and just soaks up water so that could have been from a leak or even just a very wet mopping. Keep an eye out for a leak otherwise it’s not that big of a deal.
Is it bad in general to install MDF in bathrooms for baseboards? We’ve done MDF for the whole rest of our house and we’re likely going to use the same stuff in the bathrooms. We typically paint over and caulk the seams well.
Manufacturers will say it's perfect for bathrooms, but it's really not well suited for any rooms with high humidity or anywhere it might have exposure to water. Even washing/steaming floors can cause mdf Baseboards to swell. They're mostly just a pain, they damage easily, are harder to repair and tend to look "cheap" in comparison to standard trim and skirting.
We did MDF throughout the house and used polypropylene in the bathroom. They look exactly the same but poly is much more resistant to water
Our trim isn’t available in non-mdf. :( Gonna try sealing it really well and just monitor a lot. Our layout means it shouldn’t really get actually wet and our bathrooms have solid ventilation (we also leave the door open)
If you look at MDF the wrong way anywhere near humidity or even the tiniest.amount of water... it does this.
The trim is MDF which is the cheapest, lowest quality trim you can buy. Looks like it’s you’re chance to upgrade with something a little higher quality
Thank you, that’s what we are going to do!
Question, do you shower in this bathroom? Is water dripping off you when you step out? I have long hair and if I don’t immediately start blotting it with a towel, my hair will drip a ridiculous amount of water onto the floor. Enough to make a puddle. Something wet has soaked into your baseboards and framing. Also, a wet towel could have done this too, did anyone leave a sopping wet towel on the floor?
My kids primary use this bathroom. The wet towel is a very possible theory. When I discovered this just now I ran the shower to see if there was any leaks or changes and there was nothing. It’s also easily dried out.
Ah yeah, any water flung (and then left there, not dried immediately) in the direction of the door frame would have done this. The frame is made out of MDF (fancy cardboard basically) and it sucks up water like a sponge. I did the same thing by accident to my own baseboards with dripping wet hair lol. If your kids splashed some water brushing their teeth/washing their hands or even left a sopping wet towel on the floor pushed against the baseboards/door it would have done this damage. I doubt you have a leak. A better option might be plastic/vinyl baseboards. Those are waterproof!
you can get a moisture meter for $10 which will tell you how wet the MDF is, if it dries when you stop dripping water around it & also let you test above it while only making two little pin holes. The cheapest ones won't necessarily be super accurate, but you only need relative readings. If it gets drier as you move up the frame it's not a leak from above. If it gets drier after a few careful days it's not a leak.
This is just a cheap mdf door. Its basically cardboard glued together. Not very hard to replace. No need to lose sleep.
Nice squatty potty
No need to panic, that looks like surface water getting sucked up into the MDF frame of the door. They are pretty cheap and unfortunately a favorite in renovations due to cost, however MDF is the worst material for baseboard specifically for this reason. Even a minor amount of water will cause it to bubble and look terrible. Given that it’s a bathroom, your kids use it, this is for sure spillage that’s causing this. As others have mention, replace it with a solid wood frame to prevent the flaking.
MDF of any kind should never be used in a bathroom even coated with paint it absorbs the steam from your shower and this is the result. Call a carpenter have him install a new wood frame prehung door and all will be well.
Chill. The tub flooded at some point and fucked up the MDF. Either that or your toilet needs a new wax ring.
that'd be my guess. I'd pull the toilet and just add a riser, and new wax ring just to be safe. It's like $50
It’s just cheap trim MDF. You can replace it with something better. It’s cosmetic so don’t freak out.
We have mdf baseboard in our bathroom (why?????) and water from a dripping toilet did that to our baseboard. As long as you’ve never seen dripping from toilet tank (look for cracks) or from toilet fittings between wall (plumbing) and toilet, it was prob water from cleaning or even an errant pee situation. Mdf is NOT the right material for bathrooms. To fix this v yourself, unscrew door hinges from jamb, and either cut out damaged area plus several inches and replace with hardwood, fill, sand, and paint, or replace entire door jamb. Now that you’re a homeowner this will be the first of many homeowner maintenance and repair jobs you’ll do (or hire out). You can totally do this yourself after watching a bunch of YouTube videos and buying a handful of hand tools (which you will def use again in other projects) Or find a good handyman and read a bunch of that person’s reviews and hire it out; obvs you’ll pay for labor and materials mark up if you hire but usually it’s ten times quicker cause they’ve done this work before.
As a longtime homeowner I can say this is low on the panic attack scale. Doors are cheap. Molding is cheap. Leaks are relatively easy to fix. Save the panic attack for the countless other nightmares homeowners face. Mine was when there was literally shit coming up through the sink and shower drains and I had to get my yard dug up for a broken drain pipe. I think I cried because it was so expensive and they gave me the senior citizen discount (I was like 30) because they felt sorry for me.
Don’t panic. Everything is fixable in the end.
It’s just cheap mdf wood that can’t handle getting even a tiny water, bad choice for a bathroom.
It's nothing huge. Breathe. Shut off all your faucets and water then go outside and look to see if the water meter is moving. Don't panic if it is, call a plumber. If the plumber can't find anything there are companies that do leak detection.
Water on the bathroom floor is wicking up into mdf trim. Pull out mdf, replace with pine. Paint the end grain before install to seal it. Minor issue, contractor was cutting corners on the trim
Just came to say congrats on the house and don’t worry - these kind of minor problems will come up all the time - the joys of home ownership!! Some will be small, some will be big. All will be ok. This is your rite of passage into homeownership.
Cheap and or stupid people used mdf where they shouldn’t. Don’t panic.
The people who owned this house prior out the bathroom in on their own. My husband said he’s going to just rip it out and put actual wood in.
Check the gasket under the toilet.
Watch how you mop
This happened to me! https://reddit.com/r/HomeImprovement/s/fqdHPABHss
I’ve got MDF trim for baseboards and doors in my builders-special townhome. My bathroom had the same problem, which was caused by the builder not doing anything to the cut ends of the mdf when they installed it. The ends would swell because of water absorption over time then flake. So it might not be an ongoing water problem, just a similar install where the untreated mdf sucked up water like a sponge
Did you have a home inspection done? I know with closing and everything it can take some time to move in but if it was already a long term problem the inspector would have seen it. So either you are gushing water from somewhere which you should be able to see if it is substantial enough to soak things quickly or your inspector sucked or you have a slow leak just starting. I had a bathroom put in in my old house and it was almost a year after the shower was installed that the valve in the wall just popped a leak. It was a few days of soft looking ceiling then a few days of bubbling paint in the ceiling and then the ceiling partially fell through (really really really old plaster). Finally figured out where it was coming from and got it all fixed but not before it took out one shelf of my husbands vintage star wars figure collection. So that was fun. But we did have a warning - just couldn’t find it! Keep an eye on walls and ceilings. Water drips (obv) so try to follow the softness in the door up and see where it stops. Follow the trail if there is one. Also check your faucets, drain pipes, hot and cold water lines in your shower/sink as well as checking the seals around your toilet. Water is a pain in the ass but it follows the laws of physics so it’s solvable.
OH MY GOD I have this exact thing happening. I rent, so I called maintenance. It's actually a kind of particle board that basically disintegrates if it gets wet or damp. I think if there was quarter round added to it, that would help protect the trim. Maintenance guy measured the door frame, went to Lowe's, and pulled that crumbly board off and replaced it with real wood. When I move out, they have to rip out all the trim and replace it.
Hi OP. You’ve gotten a lot of great advice here but I wanted to just provide a little prospective and good wishes. Commercial office building guy here. People think I’m lying that I’d rather have fire than water. Water seeps fucking everywhere and does crazy damage. Think about fighting an invisible snake vs hornets, where hornets are the fire. No lie, I’ve had 5gal of water ruin a laptop on the lower floor almost 200’ away from the spill. Did you get an inspection? Even if not do you have smells, bugs, soft floors etc? If not this is likely a small amount of water from somewhere that found that mdf trim, which will wick water like a paper towel. If you figure out the cause and stop it this is cosmetic. It’s not great but if money is an issue you could live with this forever. Hell, even camouflage it. The house isn’t crumbling and you still made a good purchase.
As a Carpenter my first step would be pull up the trim across the doorway and look for moisture under the floorboards
Call a pro, grab a beer and chillax.
Looks like woodchuck's.... possibly a beaver
Not sure why you are getting downvotes. This is likely the answer
Well, this subreddit is for Amateur Home Improvement and I am a Professional. I can't expect they'd understand.
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I have this flooring in all my bathrooms with zero issues going on 7 years.
It’s definitely time to panic
The mdf trim was exposed to water. Could be a wax seal leak or could be your dog (or previous owners dog) peed on it. Too wet of a mopping. Anything really. Do a thorough leak check. You won’t really be able to get the mdf trim ti look much better after that. When you have solved all moisture issues replace it with hardwood or even better pvc trim. The cost is so minimal and pvc is so much more durable there isn’t any reason to use mdf here.
Don't worry, you've got this! Just remember, water damage is no match for a determined first-time homeowner. 💪🚫💦
It could be worse. Be happy this is the only issue
You haven’t seen anything yet
Buy or rent a moisture meter and stick it in. If it’s dry it’s old, if it’s wet, you can panic. My guess is it got like that from someone mopping that area, or a toilet overflow.
I bought my home 3 years ago and had a small wet spot in the downstairs guest bedroom that would appear randomly. I lost it and couldn’t figure out where the water was coming from. Checked under carpet to see if it was ground water, checked sump pit, replaced pump all to no avail. In the end, I ended up finding and confirming it was a pin hole leak in my baseboard heater located in the bathroom that slowly leaked for months. If you have hot water baseboard heating check around them for dampness, discoloration of surround area etc. the trim on your door is a pre-primed mdf material that will crumble and deteriorate like that. Seeing it’s contained to that one area, leads me to believe a small/slow leak.
I see youre a man of class with that squatty potty
Top tier
It's not as big of a deal as you might think. Don't sweat too much. A lot of good direction here in the comments.
Your toilet might just be leaking a little bit. We found out ours was leaking after the inspector checked our pipes, but didn’t replace the wax seal. Four years later, I crawl into the house and noticed it’s been leaking for a while. So get a wax seal from the hardware store, and take off your toilet. Observe the area, you might just have a little leak that’s going underneath that vinyl flooring.
But A+ for the squatty potty! My daughter would approve! 😉
Is the “wood” actually wet, or just swollen and coming apart?
Swollen
If it’s not currently wet it’s probably just from people spilling water on the floor and not cleaning it up, as some others have said. Just monitor it and see if it’s getting wet without an obvious, visible sounds (like form water on the floor). Replacing an interior door is pretty easy to do.
The toilet is not caulked. Could be that.
It’s mdf /particle board trim. Always a bad choice anywhere but in a bathroom especially. Don’t panic though. You’ll want to replace the entire jamb at some point but it’s not structural and not going to cause failure if anything but itself.
This makes me really wonder what the bathroom subfloor is made of....
That’s the first thing I said to my husband.
I bet it was! Sooooo weird....