Tile expert Isaac Ostrom shows you how to make and install a highly functional LED lighted shower niche that can be used for storage or a night light.
“These niches are all the rage in the tile installation,” Ostrom says in the video. “If you see a shower, on Pinterest [and] Instagram, it’s going to have a niche in it. What we’ve been doing is putting dimmable LED waterproof lighting in the back of the niches so it acts as an accent light.”
[Read More: 7 EASY SYSTEMS TO HELP YOU CONSTRUCT A CURBLESS SHOWER ]
The main electrical components of the project include an LED lighting strip (he recommends a foot-long roll), a speaker cable, and a magnetic dimmable driver that converts 120 volts to 12 volts. If a builder isn’t familiar with setting up electrical systems, Ostrom recommends asking a local electrician to help find the parts.
Ostrom uses the Schluter Kerdi Board as a base. He discovered that the LED light strip fits into the Schluter DECO-SG Profile, which provides a waterproof place for the strip once he covers it with 100 percent silicone sealant.
The LED light strips sit in the top and bottom of the niche. Once it is done, builders can install the niche into the shower wall. With its dimmable feature, the system can be used as a night light, Ostrom says.
Ostrom and Marissa Ostrom, his wife, run O. Tile. They have been in the remodeling business since 2002, according to the company's website.
Transcript:
Hello, I'm Isaac Ostrom and thanks for checking out another one of my videos today I'm going to show you how to make a LED lighted shampoo niche or new Shay or niche niche is one of these things you can see here it's a recessed cubby to put your shampoo your soap your loofah candles whatever you want to put in this bad boy and we actually put LED lighting in here so the knee a lot of light of the designers so so these niches are all the rage in the tile installation if you see a shower on Pinterest Instagram whatever it's gonna have a niche in it so what we've been doing because it's an area where a lot of designers are using accents you know maybe a cool glass mosaic maybe a hexagon tile something really cool and then the niche it's like a piece of artwork like a feature that you're going to be looking at what we've been doing is putting LED lighting dimmable LED waterproof lighting in the back of the niches so that it lights up that whole wall acts as a accent light or it can be like a nightlight so you could dim it all the way down I haven't talked to too many guys who know how to do this the advantage we have of being full bathroom remodelers is is we we tie all of these things into our showers if you're just a tile guy you know show this video to your electrician he should be able to get all the parts for you but I'm gonna go over the parts with you anyways so that you can find out how to do it on your own so basically the main components of an LED lighting system if you have have the lighting strip so this is LED lighting let me see if I can focus in and you can see all of these little spaces the the copper terminals those are all places that you can cut this so this can be cut at a foot or it can come in a 16 foot roll you know for a nice you're usually using just footers this is a magnetic dimmable driver so this dimmable driver what it does is it converts 120 volt electricity coming that's at the house converts it on the other side to 12 volt DC low-voltage so once it's run out of here all you need is like a speaker cable this is a 16 gauge 2 conductor regular speaker wire and then that runs to your to your lighting so I'm going to show you how to hook all of that up one thing that I'm really proud that I discovered myself is that this lighting strip here so here here's a cut piece that I already made fits really nicely into Schluter SG deco profile so this profile so the SG profile fits fits the lighting in really nicely and it fits in there nice and snug and it creates a waterproof place for the light to sit in there so I'm gonna go over all this thanks for watching my videos I'm really excited about this so stay tuned I'm going to do a little time lapse and I'm going to stop it when I get to installing that SG profile you okay so now you can see I've got the back tile on I got the sides on and I stopped so this is the top if we're on a wall this would be the top this would be the bottom so you can see I poked through my 16 2 wire here and as you can see I made a little notch in this tile you want to make sure that this wire can go in and out you don't want it to get bound up inside the wall to where it's it's just stuck there well it can be done it is a lot easier if you have some play in this and I'm going to show you that when I do the soldering of the led niche so I got this in now I got my SG profile I'm actually gonna just rest the wire right in there like that put my profile in you can see it still still comply even with the SG profile in there it can still have some play so I got that and then my last piece of tile so here I got my last piece of tile there we go and as you can see I got my SG profile in there and my wire is still has still can moved with one it kind of wants to come up on . you so it helps to use some tape to to get it into place and now what he's doing is he's just kidding getting it kind of pre soldered we're getting a little primer on the spot so if you can see you okay so you can see here there's a positive and negative terminals right here on my finger positive and negative and so that's where the wire attaches so on these strips you can actually cut at any one of these junctions right here where the copper terminals are so we just did a little bit of solder on there it's easier to get the wires to attach if you get some solder on there first now you can see we're going to do the same thing to the ends of the wires we're gonna get some solder on there she's gonna go ahead and he's gonna put the two together he's already pre soldered both ends we have our solder go ahead and so there's double-sided sticky tape on the on the backside of the strip and that'll fit right up into that SG profile just fit it right up in there beautiful really nice so now we got our wire poking out and we're gonna hook it into the low-voltage side of our transformer here okay so we got power now we got our our sixteen two wire hooked up into little the low-voltage side here that's run into this switch which is plugged into an electrical cord so in the field this will be a piece of romex coming out of coming out of the wall and then obviously this this would be a farther distant usually we put these transformers put them up in the attic or down in the crawlspace but yeah show us how it works Josh now we have the dimmer on there go ahead and slide it up and turn it up and down yep so you can turn it up and then a lot of our customers turn it down at night for a nightlight just just so it's dimming but yeah a really cool way to to make a feature in your shower awesome good job Josh thank you beauty okay so we're gonna take 100% silicone here what color is this Josh this is a translucent white it's like a milky white kind of not quite a straight white okay cool blends with a lot of stuff so we're just gonna cover up make sure this is hundred percent watertight just cover up that little spot and then do the same thing in the corner over here so this is all waterproof they call this LED strip ip65 and that's just the code I believe for being weatherproof you can put it outside it can be in the water so make sure when you talk to the person your electrical supplier that's getting you the LED telling you want the ip65 so that it can go in a wet area so there you have it I want to thank you guys again for checking out my videos and I hope this video of our lighted niche here will help set you apart from your competitors and when you do that you can make some more money but yeah this is just a way to kick up your installs a notch again thanks for checking these out I'm really having a lot of fun with these videos I really love the community that we're kind of building here I feel like I'm getting to know a lot of you guys out there and it's really nice to hear that you appreciate what I'm doing and in turn I appreciate you guys so again keep up thegood work guys and I'll see you on the next video.
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