Replacing Bathroom vanities without flooring underneath

10 years ago

I'm looking to replace two original bathroom vanities where, in one case, the vanity was put in first, then the tile cut and laid around the vanity, and, in the other case, something similar was done, but with linoleum. Now these bathrooms are small enough where you won't see under the vanity, even if the base of the vanity is a little open (no toe kick), but I'm pretty sure I still need to fill in the area without flooring in case water gets in. At least this means that I don't need the patch-up work of that part of the flooring to look nice. Any suggestions for a cheap and easy way to patch/fill that part of the floor before putting in my new vanities?

Thanks!

Featured Answer

User

10 years ago

last modified: 10 years ago

Don't try to match. It'll just look like a bad patch.

Make it look deliberate, treat it as a feature. Have fun with it.

Create a border around the vanity and fill the remainder with mosaic tile in the colors of your existing tile mixed with colors of the rest of your bathroom.

Make sure you remove enough old tile, linoleum or wood flooring around the new vanity to leave enough room for the border as well as some of the new fill tile to show. Just like with an area rug, you want to be generous in size.

If you have beige tile and say, black accents in the bathroom, you might want to choose a solid black tile for the border, then you could use mosaic tiles in beige tones and sprinkel in some black ones to fill the rest.

Alternatively, if you find tile that almost (but not quite) matches your existing tile, you could do the border in mosaic tile, or a contrasting rectangular tile and fill the center with the almost matching tile. I only advise you to do that though if the border helps to visually separate the tiles enough to make the slight difference disappear.

The sky's the limit.

Good luck!

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Comments (6)

MizLizzie
10 years ago
I don't know why builders do this. Very frustrating. We had this issue renovating our guest bath, and I anticipate having it in the master bath. My contractor warned me it was going to look awful, but I naively thought it would be an easy fix. In the guest bath we were dealing with plain 4" white tiles but because we chose to have a furniture-style base with a recessed toe-kick, it was glaringly bad, even though the room was narrow. We had to chisel out all the grout and patch the tile, and it took many trips to the tile shops to get a match that was close enough.

Ideally, chose a vanity that fully covers the old footprint. There is no code requirement you must have flooring under the vanity, so far as I know, but it seems to me it does protect your subfloor a bit if there were to be a plumbing leak. In the master, I have already resigned myself to retiling the whole room.
chingshihy thanked MizLizzie
Heather Houser
10 years ago
We have this issue too. Our floor is red oak and it stops at the edge of the vanity. I would really love to put in a vanity with legs, but I'm resigned to getting one with a toe-kick so that i don't have to put in wood underneath it and refinish the whole floor (which runs through the whole main floor, almost). Good luck!
chingshihy thanked Heather Houser
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chingshihy
Original Author
10 years ago
Thanks for everyone's input. Wow, pippabean, I never thought about it like that. That's a great idea! I guess I was thinking too much in the box, trying to make it look the same. I can envision what you're talking about, and I think if I found the right tile/linoleum, I can actually make it look nice. Thanks for the great advice!
User
10 years ago
Glad to be of help. Be sure to post pictures of your linolem color options and of course the finished project.
User
10 years ago
last modified: 10 years ago
Pippabean: What a brilliant idea!

Talk about making lemonade from lemons. I'm so excited. I'll finally get to install the floating vanity I've lusted after. I'm going to rip out the ugly impractical vanity that I've hated for ages but have hesitated to remove due to the fact that the tile floor stops at the toe kick. I'm going to the tile store this weekend and get loads of sample tiles to play with. Good advice too, to size the insert larger than the new vanity, I've marked the edge of the new tile with masking tape, and yes, If I place the border about a foot from the new vanity it seems to look the best.

Thanks so much for sharing this simple solution.