“Let’s create a niche in the shower!” they said.
Narrator: they should not have created a niche.
The tiling of the shower cubicle is, finally, nearing an end. Except we’ve run out of grout with the final few tiles and corner crack to go. Which really is a suitable thing to happen given how inept we’ve been with the whole thing so far.
It started with the niche.
We didn’t want those wire baskety things in our shower because Vicky is a snob and thinks they’re skanky.
So a niche it was.
Then Vicky found The Most Expensive Shelf in the World, so now we have a very complicated niche and a cool shelf. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Back to the beginning.
The Tiles
After at least 14 different tile samples, we finally decided on these:
They come in random packs and deciding where to place them became a fun game. We bought a load and then they sat there in the bathroom for literally weeks as we procrastinated on actually sticking them to the wall.
Why?
Because we were scared. Joe has never tiled before, and Vicky hasn’t tiled in about 15 years. And never textured tiles.
So our friend Jodie came round with her tile cutting machine and pointing finger, and made us begin. (Thank you Jodes!)
I actually love tiling. It’s super zen squishing them into place. The cutting was no problem either because I didn’t do it, Joe did. And he did an amazing job, whilst hating every moment of it because he can deal with loud noises and my brain can’t.
We got so excited about the tiling activities that we just tiled right up to the niche without stopping to consider whether we should.
The niche itself was no problem, we built it out of Wedi boards which are magical. But tiling the niche? That required more thought than we gave it, and more planning, and more general common sense, which is in embarrassingly short supply anywhere within three metres of Vicky.
So we tiled up to the edge of the niche, and then thought about the corner trim.
Public Service Announcement: this is the wrong order to do that in. Do not do this. Get your trim first, then do the tiling, so it all fits.
What followed was a nonsense of epic and needlessly expensive proportions.
The Niche Trim Shenanigans
Because the tiles are thick and have unglazed edges, we needed to hide the edges. So normal tile trim wouldn’t work. We wanted anthracite grey tile trim to go with the grout, the shower tray, and the general ambiance.
But because we needed a really big wide trim to hide all our mistakes, all we could find was school-changing-room steel, which looked, frankly, gash.
What we needed was T-trim because it’s the only thing wide enough to cover the edges.
So the search began, and eventually we found some floor edging trim that actually looked great. And it was an acceptable colour. But we didn’t buy enough of it because… well. I think I’ve explained why.
So we did three-quarters of the niche trim, and then it sat there for another week.
Eventually, another shipment arrived — this time far more than we needed, and we finished.
And so our niche looked like this:
It does look pretty swish but was it worth the trouble? Absolutely not.
The Most Expensive Shelf in the World
While searching for tile trim, I got distracted by other cool stuff, some of which was this funky steel shelf that gets grouted into the wall between the tiles:
And yes that is how much it cost.
It’s super-thin, powder-coated texture with funky slots for drainage, and it just looks aces. Really easy to fit. I want another one now to put high up and put a plant on. Joe says no but I’ll just order one at some point and then fit it and he probs won’t notice.
Grouting
We finally did get around to the grouting, after procrastinating on that by going to London to see our friend Edd and Cirque du Soleil for the weekend, but we almost finished it today.
Except for the bit at the top and the corner, because we bloody ran out of grout. Joe says they were 150g short of 5kg, so I’m wondering if I can complain about it and get some free grout. I’ll report back if I remember to do that.
Still to do…
So yeah, we’re almost done in the shower cubicle. Still no idea what we’re doing about the shower screen, but we’ve decided it needs to be floor to ceiling to prevent Joe from bouncing water off his head into the rest of the bathroom, and it needs to be a fixed pane and a sliding door because we’re worried about water sloshing everywhere.
We haven’t siliconed around the ceiling or around the shower tray yet either. And we haven’t fitted the shower rail riser yet, or finished plumbing in the secondary shower head, or fitted the shower control plate. But we are nearly there, and it’s gonna look amazing.
