How to Build a Shower Niche

So in this video I will teach you a professional technique to install a

niche

in your wall. This won't just be a little cubby for two or three bottles, we're going to be a little bigger and sexier. I'm going to make it into a nice 16 inch long shelf and show you how to design and

build

it so that it ends right at the edge of the tiles so you don't have a bunch of little chips. all over the place, so in today's world everyone

build

s a

shower

and everyone wants to have a

shower

niche

. They love the idea of ​​a built-in storage solution, you know, without having shelves, extended posts and things like that screwed into the tiles, so what?

That is, most niches are designed to fit between wall cavity spaces and this is not always convenient. Let's face it, many times bathrooms have many different mechanical workings and you can't always find a niche where you want it when you want it. you want it, so what I'm going to do here today is show you how to build a niche that's the right size for you and your lifestyle, and what we're going to do is occupy two cavities that I'm going to be 16 inches tall. I'm going to show you how to plan and lay it out so that your mosaic is always on the edges and you don't have stupid little chips.

Here's how we do it so this product that we're using today is 4 by 16 and when you add a 1/8 inch grout line to each of these tiles, you end up with a height of 16 inches that we're going to go with. work, so first of all we want walk mark on the wall, we're going to make it 16 inches and that's finish tile to finish tile, all good. The second thing we did was we got out a laser level and we put a line on this wall and marked my laser line. now you also want to take that same measurement and determine where your tiles are going to end up if we go to about 20 inches as a start and then that will take up to 36 both this height and this height, okay, that'll be fine. if we go any higher than that it starts to go too high so it's not functional for the tub so what we're going to do is we're just going to mark our 20 inches right here okay tubs are never perfectly level so what? what do we do?

What we're going to do is build this backwards thinking from start to finish, we're going to use this back wall as part of our shower, we're going to cut pieces of wood and then I have a shelf, so if this is going to be the height of my tile , now I have to take an inch and a half where my level line is and that's where I want to cut because what I want to do is add a mark. New 2x4 here and I want to install it so it has a little bit of a slope, so we're going to take this original line now where I want my frame to be right, so it's going to become my finished tile border if I cut it. here plus 2x4, I've finished the tile mantel, but I also have to consider the thickness of my drywall and the thickness of my mosaic, so the way we do this perfectly is we take all of that into consideration and we're going to drop other. half an inch there, that's fine, not just for flexibility's sake, because you can always add a little more cement to the back of the tile to get it to the perfect height, take another eighth of an inch just to give yourself a little mercy , OK?

That's going to work fantastic, so now we're going to take that number 17 and 3/4, we're going to carry it along our wall when we build our tile, if this is our wall, okay, and we have every 4 inches. we have another tile, we're going to go four rows visually when you look at that, you want to see four rows of finish outside, you're going to have four rows of finish inside the shower, we're also going to have a tile from up there plus a backer board. plus 2x4, okay, so we want to take the same thickness of that set, so that's inch and a half plus half an inch per inch and then that extra eighth again because we can always use extra cement, so we'll add from here, which was 17 and 3/4 we'll add 16 inches and we'll add this set twice, which ends up being two and 1/8 and then two and 1/8 we add all of that together and that will give us the measurement. cut at the top so let's go ten twenty thirty three thirty five thirty seven and that's 1/4 38 38 inches and that's going to be our final cut okay so can I help clarify this one more time this is my cut line plus the thickness of about 2x4 plus a piece of drywall plus a piece of tile plus a bit of mercy plus my visual which becomes my visual front edge of the tile, plus four rows up plus a drywall of 2 by 4 plus the tile plus the mercy at this height, the actual height of the finished tiles will be down here, but why do I want to cut here to have room to do my construction?

My finished tile is here, my cut is down here so I have room to build if you lay it out this way then all you have to do is cut this 2x4 piece, roll it up and then we can build our new frame that you want nice and deep and then grab the 2x4 and twist it while unscrewing it. a little bit of a slope and I'll show you why because I see a lot of guys use the tiles to create the slope of the shelf, but the reality is that the waterproofing membrane that you are using in your shower should also have a slope for drainage, that's where These things will fail again and again.

I've seen situations where we've had to do service work for guys who didn't make sure the slope itself was in the frame, so there's all these different layers of construction and if you don't always have that slope set from the beginning , whenever water enters behind the slab, which is why we use a waterproof membrane for protection, then the problem will be solved or it will accumulate. so there may not be leaks but the water that is somewhere turns gray and stinky and it will really ruin the environment that you are showering in and we are going to put some screws in, you will see that I am really sticking out here because the walls are never squares, that's why I started here flush with the front of this, now I'm going to put my screw in here and I'm going to use this to put all of this back nice and flush, now we're going to measure from my leading edge. to my top, which will be 17 and just below a corner, just below, here we go to this shelf and it will hold three hundred and sixty pounds, a lot of structure, it's more than necessary, it has a slope, so it doesn't matter what we do from here, we move.

Go ahead we know that our finished product is going to drain and it's not going to cause any problems here we go so you can visualize our shower and you will see that now we have enough room left for two layers of drywall plus some cement and the small waterproofing membrane and a little bit of space there for mercy's sake so we can be sure to line things up perfectly on our grid line when we build in front of our shower five rows high, five love it, here we go, so the material we're Here is use waterproof and mildew treated drywall in the bathroom, this is good for damp areas and it's funny because you know that in the old days green drywall first appeared in the late seventies and early eighties , I believe, and it was designed to be will. more waterproof then they added blue drywall and that one was mold resistant now they've gotten rid of most of that product and now it's all green and we're back to being mold resistant and waterproof in one so if it looks like a It can be a bit confusing and if you want to learn how to do drywall like a pro, watch our video on drywall from A to Z.

It will be linked at the end of the video. Now it's time to trim it with the road. Remember this green cut. The tool has a pilot bit here so that it runs against the frame of the 2x4 and behind the wall and we just cut in a counterclockwise motion, so what we have left to do now is mask off all of our wood. with drywall and then we will add our waterproof membrane. Now the reason we drywall is because you don't want to drywall directly because it would expand the Zynga tracks and drywall doesn't do that when you build the system. a bunch of drywall and sealing it and then waterproofing it will maintain its integrity and its size.

We could let the wall expand and contract as much as we want behind it, but we want to make sure that our membrane stays as one piece and I don't want to count on the membrane to adhere to this wood and not open up cracks as it moves. expands and contracts. We are using water and mildew resistant drywall for the interior of the shower. This is traditional drywall. There's nothing special about it, but it helped make it happen. depth in the corner we don't want to add another back drywall when all we have to do is waterproof it now this is not Red Guard don't worry about your eyesight this is actually a Mapai product called aquadefence and this is a similar membrane to a red guard now I know that a red guard got a lot of mention in YouTube videos.

I've used it before other companies use it and one of the reasons you see it a lot is because that's the brand of our product. It is sold at the local hardware store and is a little pricey, but it works very well and as far as options for most homeowners who don't know where to buy, going to the local hardware store and purchasing a Roland membrane is a great solution. Now Mapai is Aqua Defense, in my opinion it is a superior product. Now we don't have to worry about the finished edges of the drywall or anything like that.

Here we're just going to paint all of this and you'll see it very quickly in the rush. I'm going to do the second application of this product, which is necessary, and then I'm going to have an amazing seal, okay guys, so once the first coat is pretty much dry, come on and put the second coat on there. Well, be very generous with her. there isn't much of a waterproofing system and it costs a few cents a glass and the grand scheme of things now if you are joining this type of content and you haven't subscribed to our channel yet I suggest you do so and give us a thumbs up up if you like this kind of stuff so we have an idea of ​​what you'd like us to bring you and if you just subscribed and hit that little notification bell so we'll let you know every time we have something new.

A video is practically guaranteed to be posted every Saturday night at 9:00 EST, so to see how this project turns out, check out the link at the end of the video and see a reality run an episode of vision in this bathroom, click on the video. to see how this project turned out