How to Build a Cheap and Totally Custom Niche in Your Shower or Tub

what's up everybody welcome to another episode of today workout and today i'm continuing some bathroom videos and today we're going to talk about how i install a custom niche this niche is going to be around a 12 by 16 inch niche smack right in the middle of the shower so when you walk in it looks nice we're gonna do a nice little mosaic on it so i do like the 12 by 16 size because you can fit a lot of shampoo and soaps in this box and it doesn't look too big so let me start getting into how i prep the the niche and i'm gonna i have to cut the stud out and that's the first thing we're gonna go over you have to cut this two by four out i'm gonna show you how to do it super cleanly so you don't have any damage on the wall this right here was existing i don't know if you can see that that was broken at some point i don't know why but we have this line right here and this line right here that is believe it or not it's 16 and a half inches why is it 16 and a half inches because we need to lose two inches for a half for a two by four plus a half inch of uh cement board same thing on this side so that's two and two that's four inches so now we're at what 12 and a half inches now you have tile so you add take away another three quarters of an inch give or take and that's going to give me around 12 inches so right now i'm going to cut out this this uh 2x4 to show you and i'll show you how to break it super easy so you don't damage the drywall on the bedroom wall side take your circular saw don't be scared and keep it completely close so you have a nice big cut and then you're just gonna come through like so it's nice slow easy and steady one two we have this little bit of meat left what i'm going to do is i'm going to take my vibrating saw and i'm going to finish up the rest of this cut now you can see the cuts nice and straight some people use a sawzall i i like using a circular saw i think it's super clean so let me uh get the vibrating sword and cut this rest of this tube right next up you get a nice nice sharp blade and just follow follow the bottom here with the vibrating saw [Music] that's it same thing you want to go to the top though you want to go with it the tie end of the curfew [Music] tada nice and clean you have a nice beautiful flat area to work with now now we're going to cut the two by fours across [Music] all right i have a nice this doesn't have to be perfectly level these two by fours because we're tiling obviously but i do set it to level so i'm going to just screw it in right now and we will uh i will continue i will cut this piece and and you'll see what i'm doing so let me uh start working on that this is my finished right here so i have a half inch foot tile and then wall board so that's another half inch that's where my student's gonna go so you just measure the difference it's nine and a quarter so nine and a quarter goes right here and that's where i'm going to put my studs and so let me start cutting those [Music] [Music] all right hey now look we got anisha roughed in so we have what's our measurements we have 14 by 18 and a half so basically we have about two more inches to go on each side right so 4t minus 2 is 12 and then 18 minus 2 is 16 so there you go that's your measurements and next up we're going to throw some uh cement board on here and then we'll waterproof it i'll get into that in a little bit i still have a few things to do in the bathroom before we close it up but for now we'll uh we'll jump into how i waterproof this all right today's the next day i started the cement board so this is basically straightforward we're gonna i'm gonna cement board this you could use anything you use your any type of membrane you want so right now i'm gonna cut out this hole and then what i'm gonna do is you'll see this i'm gonna cut out i'm gonna silicone that piece of cement board to the back of this wall that's how i do it and then i will cut the sides in and push that back piece in nice and tightly so it doesn't go anywhere so that's the next step so let's start working on that [Music] [Music] all right hold us cut let's check it out [Music] [Music] looks like it's pretty good i just need to shave a little bit right here [Music] there you go all right so next up i'm going to screw this up and then i'm going to put that piece i cut out and silicon into the back wall my piece fits really well i don't like how it looks it looks like it's it's supposed to be there so i'm going to hit it with silicone just to hold it a little bit in place it's not it's not going to go in there once we tile and throw the red guard on and the mortar but you need a bat you can't put tile on drywall like this no good some people do it i i don't do it so let's just massage it in and that's good and then we'll put the sides in and that'll lock in this piece of cement so let's start working on that i cut the i cut the first piece and i screwed it in now i'm gonna score it so i have a nice clean edge to work with just like that done and then i'll do i'll do the sides and i'll do the top and then we'll recap that and then we'll go over waterproofing it's about a day of work to do a niche between prepping it framing it cement boarding it waterproofing it and then tiling it so it's a pretty lengthy process now how am i going to waterproof the niche and i'm going to show you how and i mentioned this in another video when i was doing the tile ready base with the bench i use straight flex so i don't use the schluter band because i think it's silly and it's too wide this trait flex is awesome it's awesome i love it so what i'm going to do now is i'm going to cut out all of the straight flecks and i'm gonna cover this whole box up and then i'm gonna mortar it in so let me start doing that all right so my first cut i just made now that's for the first bottom piece and then i'm gonna go around like so take about an eighth of an inch off i would say give or take so i just go like this and then i just there's little numbers on the straight flex so i got this one right here i'm gonna cut it and then this will be this side and that's about right i don't like it making making it too tight because once you put the motor on it builds it up a little bit and you don't want the straight flex to the jam up and i'm going to show you how i don't think it really matters how i taper it but i actually install it like flashing like a roof so you go bottom up so if water gets underneath it'll come down into the shower but this thing will never leak i was just telling my client you're probably talking this is a hundred year bathroom there's no way this bathroom's gonna leak anytime soon unless like a like a tornado hits this bathroom or just gets outdated and someone wants to rip it out so let me finish cutting this up [Music] i cut all my pieces now i'm going to motor all this in and like i said i'm going to do it like a roof so i'm going to flash it in basically not that it matters because we're going to regard all of this that's the next step but right now let me start watering in the box when you throw the water in don't be cheap mortars this is the uh this is the home depot stuff it's the uh it's like the 15 dollar stuff i'll show you a picture of it don't be cheap okay that's why i said i gave a little bit of room on the straight flex so i could accommodate for some water build up because i want to bed this in as like as as much as i possibly can when you're installing the mortar make sure when you put in the mor the water you want to have a good coverage so when you have an overlap on the straight flex you want to build that up with some water just like that so you have a good nice good stick same thing on the right side i'm going to just hit it with some water so it's going to come down remember like roofing flashing same thing just push it in it's that's that's the pro tip on this to make it nice so let me continue [Music] [Music] [Music] look at this niche doesn't it look good i think it looks good it looks pretty solid right it's all motored and nice you can see you could barely see the tape make sure when you make your mortar you make it really it's a loose it's a loosey water it's almost snotty uh and it's not as it's not marshmallowy i make it a little bit looser so it kind of acts like a dry compound this is gonna dry up really really well and then tomorrow morning we'll red guard so that's it for now and then we will continue this tomorrow morning last well there's two more steps to finish before we actually finish waterproofing the custom niche the first thing you need to do is just not go up any high spots on in the niche like i have a little bit of a high spot there because once we waterproof it and we do the next step which is the right guard you can't really chip at it so it's going to just knock off now that all the high spots are knocked off we're going to throw the red guard on the first step with the right guard is you need to wet it's just like anything else lack of moisture is bad when you're installing any of this between modified water or putting up red bug right guard wants moisture so i'm going to wet all the water with a sponge so once i got all this water then i'm gonna open up the red guard and i'm gonna i'm gonna start applying the red guard so i'm gonna just dip it in the bucket and then i'm gonna cover this all up just like so i'm probably going to do i actually do around three coats around the niche and then two coats everywhere else so that's basically it so let me uh let me regard the stuff and then we'll read that [Music] there you have it that's how i install a custom 16 by 12 shower niche if you like this video please like it if you like more of these videos and how i build my bathrooms please subscribe i think this one is pretty well covered if you have any questions please ask in the comments and i will answer you i always do and again thanks for watching and i'll catch you next time 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Channel: Today I Work On

Views: 104,578

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Id: 89WSk_Y-4U4

Length: 14min 15sec (855 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 06 2022