apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

A potted plant.

Neither of those cupboards will fit because your sink has legs.

You need a large SOMETHING full of fluffy towels under the sink. Two ways you could go with this:

1. Chrome, nickel, or zinc planter (put stick-on pads on the bottom to protect your floor). This will make the legs just one more bit of shiny metal.

2. Textured basket, preferably with a design that mirrors the tile border, so that the basket is just more visually interesting than the legs/pipes and drowns them out.

You could get a basket and cut out a hole in the back to accomidate the pipes and store towels or TP back there.

I once had this exact same situation in an apartment, and I also needed some sort of storage place for stuff that no one needs to see, but I would need to get at every one in awhile, but not every day.

I took an old matchstick bamboo blind I had sitting around, and trimmed it down so that the width of the blind was the same measurement as the distance from the floor to the underside of the sink. I then turned the blind sideways and attached the top of the blind to the wall (with screws, same as how you'd attach it to the window frame.) Then I wrapped the blind around the sink legs, tying it to the legs with jute string. The end part I left open as a little door to get at my stuff. Worked like a charm. You could easily paint the blind if you didn't want the natural look (mine was a medium toned matchstick blind, not the super light kind)

Good luck!

You might not like the idea of a traditional fluffy sink skirt, but if you use the same idea with different materials and no gathering it can look more sleek. For example, a bamboo roller shade: take the roll of material off the roller, cut it so it wraps around the sink mounted to the underside with velcro. Make sure it's mounted nice and flat all the way around.

I'm thinking, why not embellish and celebrate the piping AND legs instead of hiding them? If you could somehow coat them so they look like the material of the sink itself, or even better, super-chrome them so they are amazingly shiny and mirror the surroundings. The benefit of either one would be that they would almost disappear, I would think.

Maybe customize something out of wood that wraps around the sink that you can easily pull out of the way when you need to get under there.

Either that or just put a nice shelf down there and store some pretty towels under there.

Another option, if you don't need the storage underneath, is to try to paint a pattern or put up a vinyl decal behind it that creates an interplay between the wall and the pipe. Turn it into a work of art.

Maybe get a bright shop light and shine at the pipe, then trace the shadow on the wall. Put up one of those funky vinyl characters in such a way that it looks like he's fixing the pipe or something.

If you need the storage, look for something black and shiny or mirrored that will fit under the sink. If you don't, then leave it alone. It's right for the period--celebrate Machine Age.

Love the floor.

It's not as ugly as you think. I mean, thousands of apartments and homes have this same sink design.

Just get a couple square baskets, fill them with towels and toilet paper and use the space.

what about just a beautiful hand painted or inlaid wastebasket? or rig a towel bar in between the legs? it's really not bad. better than than those ugly cheap sorta-wood built-in thing right?