Bathroom design ideas needed

My wife and I are both over 6 ft tall. Our downstairs bathroom has a tiny vanity and my wife wanted to replace it so we wouldn’t have to bend over so much just to wash our hands. And it is also starting to rot and fall apart.

The new vanity that she got has a thin cabinet where the bowl extends out from it. And it has feet so you can see the floor underneath. The old vanity was just a cabinet sitting on the floor. It must have been original because the people that lived there before us, tiled around the old vanity (cut tiles and grouted up to the wood).

When I take the old vanity out, we will probably see the subfloor underneath. Since the new vanity is thinner and has legs, it will be very obvious that there are tiles missing.

I have no idea how old the tiles are. I’m assuming that we won’t find any matching tiles at a flooring store. The tile goes through the entire foyer, bathroom and kitchen, so replacing it all is not an option (no budget for all of that).

Anyone have any ideas to either fill or cover the square hole in the tile under the new vanity?

A contrasting or complementary tile that extends an equal distance out from the sink in all directions. Don’t try and match - it’s going to be obvious but something that works with the existing tile and the new vanity will work.

I don’t see why you can’t do some sort of mosaic tile in that space. Do you have any place else in the bathroom to add matching mosaic? Is there a backsplash behind the vanity?

I think doing something that looks like “we meant to do that” (mosaic tiles to add a bit of “art”) instead of “that’s the best we could do” (not-quite-matching new tiles) will be better.

Then again, how big is the bathroom? Have you priced out the cost of a whole new floor? You could probably do it yourself, you just have to be careful about the transition from the hallway to the bathroom. Pick out a threshhold first and then get tiles to match.

Since you’re that tall, you might appreciate a little more height. Build a platform underneath. With that style of vanity, it will be a bit tougher to pull off a designed look, but if you have the room, you could extend the platform to the sides, and maybe bring it up to another height with some incorporated open shelving off to one side.

Otherwise, you could create a border slightly larger than the vanity with co-ordinating tiles. I’d remove the cut tiles, and plan something for the whole space that would fill it in with minimal cutting–for instance, center filled with 6" squares, 2 rows of 4", 4 rows of 1".

Mosaic tiles, both on the floor slightly larger then the “hole”, and use the same mosaic tiles for the backsplash.

Oh, and here is the bathroom section of Ikea. Great stuff.

Take out a square section of flooring at least 6 inches wider than the new vanity. Install new flooring in that square. Don’t try to match it to the existing floor or it will look like you did a bad patch job. Rather make it in a complementary color with a different texture. Or go with a bolder accent color, which will work because most of it will be covered by the new vanity. I’m thinking a high gloss black marble (but I like contemporary).

Just don’t pick out a color that is too trendy or it’ll look stupid in 5 years.

Wow, a lot of really good ideas.

I had thought about putting some kind of platform there to make it even taller, but I thought that might look a bit cheezy with the vanity’s legs. Maybe if it were just a regular box vanity, that might have worked.

I had also thought of using a board finished in the same color as the vanity with nice rounded edges laid overlapping the surrounding tile, but that seemed a bit odd as well.

We’re not re-doing the entire bathroom yet. It’s on the list but we have other things to re-do first. So I don’t know if my wife has any ideas on what color scheme she wants to redo the bathroom in eventually. If so, then I like the idea of contrasting color tiles. But I don’t want to rip them up in a couple years.

The current tile is plain white with tan grout.

You don’t have to go crazy with the contrasting colors. The color can be tan to match the grout, or any other shade of gray or brown. Then when you go to re-decorate with color, you don’t have to worry about the color of the new tile. It’ll be neutral.