Baseboard on a tile wall?

January 6, 2018 10:26 AM

We're about to tile a bathroom wall behind the sink and toilet. We just put vinyl tile on the floor with a 1/8 - 3/8 inch gap against the walls. (The walls aren't totally straight, so the gap varies.) Is it best to tile the wall all the way to the floor, then use adhesive to stick baseboard to the wall tile? Or use cove tile at the bottom, then just caulk the gap? The cove tile that matches the wall tile isn't deep enough to cover the gap between the wall and the floor tile when that gap is at its widest. I've looked around DIY sites and Youtube, but opinions vary.
posted by samw to Home & Garden (6 answers total)

Best answer: I wouldn't try to stick baseboard to tile, certainly.

You could install baseboard and then tile down to it. I would probably use a cove tile and caulk as needed.
posted by humboldt32 at 10:46 AM on January 6, 2018

Best answer: The most expedient solution is to use cove base tiles and caulk any area where the cove base tiles are not quite deep enough. Nobody but you will ever notice. However, if it were me, the fact that I would know would bug me every time I looked at the wall.

It is more work, but I would remove the vinyl tiles in the areas where the gap exceeded the width of the base of your cove base tiles then cut and install new vinyl tiles for these areas, striving for a 1/8" gap all along the wavy wall. Then I would use cove base tiles for the wall to floor transition.
posted by RichardP at 1:41 PM on January 6, 2018

I would use a wood base that matches your floor. Tile down to the base. You need to have the base installed over top of the flooring level and allow the flooring to expand/contract. If you tile and install a cove tile, you've defeated the purpose of leaving the gap (which is manufacturer's best practices.)
posted by mightshould at 1:50 PM on January 6, 2018

If you stuck a baseboard on the wall tile your going to have gaps to collect crud and it's going to look weird.
posted by bongo_x at 4:15 PM on January 6, 2018

Quarter-round would easily fill the gap. Or you could go all old-timey artistic and put a second baseboard in front of the on against the tile. Layered-like.
posted by Enid Lareg at 7:08 PM on January 6, 2018

Response by poster: Decided to use cove tiles and just put up with extra-wide caulk in a few places. Thanks for the input!
posted by samw at 9:06 PM on January 6, 2018