Installing a perfect tile ready shower niche can be a real challenge, even for the master tile setter.
There are several approaches and each has benefits and disadvantages in price, difficulty and results….
1. Buy a prefab niche and be totally disappointed with the results. This would be my least favorite choice since the problem with this is one of what it looks like when you are done. While the concept is great it doesn’t address the issue of integrating the size of the niche with the tile layout. Using a 14×20 niche might seem to be a great idea, but if you are using 8″ tile, is that really going to line up nicely? If you choose to use one of these, don’t buy it blind, thinking that it will somehow work out. Plan out the tile work on a piece of graph paper and be sure you know how to integrate it. The real problem with the stock size drop in is that you have to waterproof the joints where it meets the wall board after all that futzing with blocking and planning. For the newbie, the two options that are discussed next are way better and deliver much better results than the redy to tile plastic niche.
2. Build the perfect niche onsite and spend almost nothing. This is what most tile people do and while it takes a good bit of time to do it, they come out perfect. Before you put up your wall board, pick a place for the niche. It doesnt have to be perfect. Make sure the framing is out of the way and make the framed opening a few inches larger all around. This way you have some latitude to move the niche location a few inches either way to line up with the tile work. Cut a small locator hole in teh center of the niche area once you put up the walls or you may forget the niche is there and tile right over it. It wouldnt be the first time. Once you have the walls tiled all around the niche, go ahead and cut the wall board out and you can frame the niche right to your layout lines. Once you have this wooden box in the wall, line it with wallboard and use mortar and meshtape followed by a waterproofing agent to make a liner that you can set your tile right on.
3. Have a custom designed niche made by a fabricator. There are fabrication shops out there who will make niches of marble, granite or solid surface and these, while at the total upper end of affordability will be totally elegant and beautiful. The great thing about these is that they can fuse the corners to be perfectly waterproof with epoxy in the shop with no need to bring that toxic stuff into your home. The other thing I like about this is that they can build the niche to order after the tile work is complete and you don’t have to worry about getting the joints to line up.
Pan Man