u/Significant-Map-7649

We are embarking on a bathroom remodel and I need to make final decisions about my tile, paint, fixtures, etc. We have an older home with a small bathroom. The tub is sort of recessed along the left-hand side of the room. Currently, there is only a finger-width between where the door swings into the room and the edge of the vanity. It is ugly - I won't post the before pic, but it has lavender walls, a cracked vinyl tub, and beige linoleum floors. We are keeping the bathtub (replacing with a sturdier option) and will have a shower curtain. (Didn't want to do glass shower stall or door because the room is already so small.) We're also changing the swing-in door to a pocket door.

In the remodel, I am trying for a mix of modern and classic - mosaic tile floor, subway tile tub surround. Vanity will be dark blue. I have looked at so much tile online, but I am really struggling to visualize everything and commit to a tile. I have been trying to use AI tools like Gemini to mock up design ideas, and they are helpful to a point, but tend to crap out on me, misinterpret my prompts, or render incorrectly - especially after a few iterations. It gets frustrating. Any advice for using tools to really figure out a good design? We like colorful spaces, but I have been avoiding colored tile because it doesn't give me that classic feel? We want to stick with porcelain tile. I am a little concerned that the white floor tile will get really dirty, but I'm hoping the contrasting grout helps with that.

We're leaning towards an octagon-and-dot floor tile and white subway tile walls. I really wanted to do a half-wall of tile around the whole room, but I think the bathroom just looks too white when I mock that up. I've attached a very rough idea (Gemini-generated) of what we're playing around with. The space is very small. Would love to hear any design ideas. Ignore the mis-matched finishings (black vs. gold) and weird AI quirks in these images.

AI rendering with half-wall of tile; it should wrap around behind toilet, too.

AI Rendering without half-wall of tile

How do you all edge your flowerbeds and keep a good border between your beds and your lawn? I've lived in my house for around 5 years. Previous owners had nice flowerbeds but with very young kids, I have not been able to keep up. Now that kids are getting older, I'm doing a better job, but the grass from our lawn has made major incursions into all of our flower beds. (Not to mention the weeds - I feel like I could spend all of my free time weeding!) I keep getting ads for EdgeRight and it looks great, but it would be really out of my budget to do my whole yard. How are you keeping that nice edge between the beds and the lawn? I will add that I have not done any sort of groundcover on my beds (such as wood chips, mulch, etc.) and previous owners never seemed to have that either. Thanks for any suggestions!

I have so much shotweed growing in my backyard grass and flowerbeds this year. Sadly, I did not catch it when it was just sprouting. (And, some of it is in my actual lawn/grass where the ground is really compacted and hard to pull weeds.) I attempted to weed some of it with a plastic garbage sack to catch the shooting seeds/prevent further spread, but was not very successful at getting the bag in a good spot to catch the seeds before they exploded. Does anyone have strategies for this? I wish I had a big sticky cone I could put around to catch all those flying seeds...