Tiling a bathroom with a feature stripe..

GreeBo

Hey all,
we ae in the process of choosing tiles for our bathroom.
We have decided that we want to put a vertical stripe down one wall, hopefully behind the toilet.
The issue we have is that the toilet is not in the centre of the room, in fact its about 5cm off.
If we tile using the toilet as the centre line we will have uneven tile cuttings at each corner of the room (3/4 of a tile at one side and about 1/4 at the other side)
If we tile using the middle of the wall as the centre line, the stripe will be offset against the toilet...

any ideas?
cheers

Viking House

Cut 5mm off all tiles to one side of the line, you won't notice this!

ctrl-alt-delete

Viking House wrote:

Cut 5mm off all tiles to one side of the line, you won't notice this!

You would if there was a finished edge to the tile - which in my experience there always is - I wouldnt go down this route.

I cant think of anything at the moment OP, sorry.

GreeBo

cheers guys..
anyone else?
anyone even got an opinion on which will look better/worse; a stripe not aligned to the toilet or uneven sized tiles at each corner?

garyh3

Few ideas

1 Why not put 2 vertical lines down the wall.

2 Instead of a vertical line why not put the tile around the toilet.

3 Instead of a vertical line of tiles why not use 2 different tiles alternating to give a feature wall.

GreeBo

garyh3 wrote:

Few ideas

1 Why not put 2 vertical lines down the wall.

Do you mean two lines behind the toilet or two lines evenly spaced down the wall?
The bathroom is a bit weird in that we have the sink, toilet and bath/shower all on the same wall so I think if we put lines anywhere it will just look like we missed what we were trying to highlight...

garyh3 wrote:

2 Instead of a vertical line why not put the tile around the toilet.

Not sure what you mean here...?

garyh3 wrote:

3 Instead of a vertical line of tiles why not use 2 different tiles alternating to give a feature wall.

Well what we are doing is using two different tiles of the same size...one has a mosaic finish the other is plain....

Cheers for the ideas...

Sonnenblumen

Why not remove and re-position the toilet after you've completed the perfect tiling complete with the feature line. Any other solution will be a visual compromise and possibly crap looking given the characteristics!

vallo

Put the stripe where you want it to be, centred on your toilet - tile from either side of it towards the corners of the room and cut the last row of tiles to fit snugly into the walls.
As far as I recall, the golden rule of tiling is to place a central tile on the wall and work out from there cutting at the corners, rather than starting with a full tile in the corner and working just left to right towards the other corner.
If you look closely at tiling jobs in friends houses, public toilets, you'll see cut tiles in all the corners - it is completely normal.

GreeBo

vallo wrote:

If you look closely at tiling jobs in friends houses, public toilets, you'll see cut tiles in all the corners - it is completely normal.

Yeah, but the golden rule is to have the same sized cut-offs on each side, no?


As for moving the WC, I think thats a bit of overkill...that means re-doing the waste which is a pain in the whatsits.

ctrl-alt-delete

GreeBo wrote:

Yeah, but the golden rule is to have the same sized cut-offs on each side, no?
QUOTE]

Not really no....just not to have an avoidable tiny cut anywhere.

I suppose what you could do is make the feature stripe as big as needed to make even cuts both sides. That is if you definetly want even cuts both sides.

This could be done as suggested above by having two stripes and fill the middle in with whatever tile you are using for the remainder of the wall.

Im presuming the mosaic tile you speak of is the one you are using for the stripe? If you havnt purchased the tiles yet, you could decide to buy a type of tile that will match your plain tile - and cut it into mosaic pieces yourself - that way you can judge the width needed for a symetrical looking wall.

Im sure everybody knows the prices of borders and how much they ad to the value of tile purchases. For those experienced and willing to put in the time id recommend making your own borders. I recently done this with my brother in his house, we saved €250 on the price of the borders. I will post pictures tomorrow if i can get him to send me some.

GreeBo

The mosaic tile is basially the same tile as the rest of the room but it has a mosaic finish to it (space for grout lines basically)
If we position the stripe behind the toilet then the imbalance is about 3cm.
so basically we have more than half a tile at each corner but one is 3cm bigger than the other. (Tiles are 25x40)
I thought this might look kinda crap but maybe Im overreacting?

squire1

You will probably be they only one who notices. Having different size cuts at either side is not normally a problem unless one or both of the cuts are very small (ie. under 20% of full tile width).

GreeBo

squire1 wrote:

You will probably be they only one who notices. Having different size cuts at either side is not normally a problem unless one or both of the cuts are very small (ie. under 20% of full tile width).

Yeah, I guess its just one of those things that you only notice in the begining, a bit like when I put the handles on the new kitchen presses, spent ages trying to get them all exactly level then checked the existing ones that I have lived with for a year and they were miles out! :rolleyes: