Tiled shower niche/shelf?

[trammatic]

I'm getting ready to take the plunge to replace the plastic tub/shower insert in the master bath with a larger tiled shower.  MMM's post about the pan made sense, and I think I can go from there.  I'm curious how to make a niche or shelf in the wall itself.  How does one go about doing one of those and making it look good?

[Nate R]

Easy way is to buy a pre-made niche that gets screwed into the surrounding wall. Like "Recess-It" or similar.
John Bridge's forum (And book) will have all the info you need for tiling and prep. ( johnbridge.com )

[c]

I've been wondering about a niche. I don't like them, but everyone says to put one in. I found a few suppliers of those pre-formed ones, that's what I'd go with if I did one, but only because I have no experience, also I only have one bathroom, so I can't take an extra day to build out a niche (which is probably how long it would take me).

[BayIslandSaver]

Has anyone tried using a prefab niche? 

My concern is that the flange/flap on the outer will cause the tile to be out of level with the neighboring tiles.  I should prob see them in person, but I wonder what the thickness is on the flap portion.

My local retailer carries these:

http://ez-niches.com/products.html

[MsSindy]

60 bucks for a large rectangular box???  Doesn't seem very Mustachian to me.  We're building our master shower now and will be putting in a niche.  Should be building it out over the next couple of weeks - I'll come back and post what we did.  I mean, how hard can it be, it's just a box between some studs.

[BayIslandSaver]

60 bucks for a large rectangular box???  Doesn't seem very Mustachian to me.  We're building our master shower now and will be putting in a niche.  Should be building it out over the next couple of weeks - I'll come back and post what we did.  I mean, how hard can it be, it's just a box between some studs.

True...I figured the prefab would have all the right angles and is guaranteed to be waterproof.
Building a proper niche from scratch could be time consuming for a newb like myself.

[cosmie]

I happened to be talking to a plumber friend today about tiling showers (he's redoing a bathroom in his house), and shared the MMM article about it. He was very interested and approving of all of it, and happened to be most curious of how the niche was done. Apparently build-your-own cutouts from the backerboard are notoriously difficult to waterproof and tend to leak within the first few years of putting it in, requiring ripping up part of the tile to fix. He suggested a sort of prefabbed semi-rigid plastic nook that wedges between two studs.

[Nate R]

Yeah, I think this is a scenario where the extra up front cost is worth it. Unless you're buying Redgard anyway, I'd steer towards the pre-made niche. The bottom is usually already sloped properly for water to drip, it's waterproof, etc.

[c]

I decided against doing one just because I don't really like them, had I done one I definitely would have have gone the pre-fab route. After doing a ton of research I decided it would add an entire day for me and the risk of messing up would be too great if I built my own.

I'm also doing the un-mustachian thing of paying the guys who are putting in my tub to do the concrete backer board etc as well. While theoretically I could do it myself, it's more of a risk than I want to take in the bathroom. It's my first time tiling and I want a perfect surface.