Tiled Alcoves

This article will show you whats involved in making a tiled alcove.

Overview

Tiled alcoves are an alternative to shower caddies, bathroom cabinets and fitted furniture as a place to store shampoo bottles etc.

Tiled alcoves are a lot easier to put into stud walls rather than solid walls although this is sometimes still possible.

The best thing to use to construct these alcoves are pre formed waterproof recess storage units such as this:

However, in some instances, the size required may not coincide with the manufactured size of these pre built units so they will have to be made.

In this example, the units were made to fit the space and tie in with the tile layout i.e. each box would be 200mm wide x 1.5 tiles high (450mm) and would tie in with the grout lines running through.

Process

18mm plywood boxes were glued and screwed together off site, and then fitted into the bathroom studwork into position as required.

The studwork was then boarded with cement tile backer boards.

The whole area was then tanked to ensure that it remained waterproof throughout the length of the installation, and all joints were reinforced with special tape.

You can see a horizontal band of tape going across the wall by the shower pipework and one in the corner that has been previously applied and then tanked over with the waterproof membrane.

This process is repeated for all joints, junctions & weak points where water could make its way into the wall behind the tiles causing damage.

The walls were then tiled….

And chrome tile trims were fitted….

Before the internal recesses were tiled with mosaic tiles.

PS A slight fall (towards the front) was built into the bottom of the alcoves to ensure water would run out of them, and the grout was sealed to prevent discolouration of the grout & mould formation.

Silicon sealant was used to finish off all internal joints.

The end result allowed for integrated storage of bathroom products.

Here’s another example of a bathroom recess I did a couple of years ago.

Please see here for some more ideas as to how you could use tiled recesses to create a focal point or simply some much needed storage space.

Thanks for reading

Chris