Create a niche to hold soap and shampoo when replacing shower tile

 

Completed shower niche. Photo by Dallas Alice

To keep your shower necessities at hand in the shower, you can choose to use stick-on adhesive corner shelves, suction cup baskets, or pole units (with a shelf or two) that depend on spring tension to keep it in place. In my opinion, they just create more clutter in the shower, fail to stay attached to the shower wall, and are just more stuff to clean because they accumulate soap scum and mineral buildup just like the rest of the shower. At some point, you’ll want a better solution.

 

Redoing a bathroom or making small repairs is an opportunity not just to beautify your bathroom, but to improve on how well the bathroom functions. So if you’re redoing or replacing the tile in your shower area – or even around the tub – consider this solution. Create a niche that is integrated into the wall of the shower or bathtub surround.

 

I found a product that made creating a niche easy and foolproof. The Noble Company makes shower products, and in particular a waterproof foam niche that fits between the studs in the wall and fits within the normal depth. You cut the opening to the exact size to accept the niche size of your choice, place it in the cut out and affix a little caulk between the wallboard (we used Hardibacker) and the pre-formed niche. Then you adhere the tile of your choice on top of the foam just as you would tile the rest of the shower wall or tub surround.

 

For my project, I chose a 1” tumbled marble tile with frosted green-glass accents. We sealed the tiles with a stone sealer. This type of tile comes with a mesh backing, making it easy to cut and place the tile as a whole unit, rather than individually. Then I centered the pattern of the tiles so that a few of the glass tiles would be centered in the back of the niche, and using a tile saw, trimmed the tile to the exact shape. To help the tiles stay attached to the top of the niche until the mortar/adhesive dried, I placed a small box with a sponge on top to apply gentle pressure against the tiles while the mortar/adhesive dried. When the mortar had set up, we used an epoxy grout in a color that blended well with the color combination of the tiles.

 

The most important aspect of the project was placing the niche at approximately shoulder level on the same wall as the showerhead, making soap and shampoo easy to reach, even with my eyes closed. Also,I chose a narrow, arched shape for my application to repeat arches found elsewhere in the home. The product comes in a variety of widths and shapes suitable for most applications. The choice of glass, ceramic, or natural stone tiles will make it your own.