Hey, guys!
In this video, we’re going to discuss Schluter’s metal shelves.
These are a great option for corners of showers, in the middle of shower walls, even inside
niches.
We’re going to show you how to install them, what they’re all about, and some of the
pros and cons.
One quick announcement before we begin, and we’re really excited to share this with
you: we have a brand new course over on Bathroom Repair Tutor that shows you step-by-step how
to build a curbless shower either in a basement bathroom over concrete or a second floor bathroom
over plywood.
This is an awesome course.
Many people ask us questions about curbless showers, so that’s the reason why we build
it, and you can check it out down in the description, or simply visit bathroomrepairtutor.com.
So the first metal shelf that we installed is in the corner of this shower.
As you can see here, it’s a very small shower.
This is a shower niche that we thought we were going to use, but we just think it wouldn’t
go with the style of the tile.
And then this is the shelf here that is in the center of the wall.
This is called the Schluter-SHELF-E. It’s a corner shelf.
It goes between the grout joints on this wall and then like your plumbing wall.
The width is 6 1/16.
So you got 6 1/16 here.
And then you have 11 5/8 on the long side.
This is called the floral pattern right here, and we were able to match this pattern with
the Schluter-SHELF-W. So this Schluter-SHELF-W goes in between your tiles on the top and
the bottom.
As you can see, there’s plenty of room to put shampoo and soap and different things
on top of this.
And the nice part is, these little cut-outs, water drains through them.
So that’s what’s really cool.
Even though those cut-outs are great for draining, one of the issues that we ran into the hard
way is when you’re setting this, if you don’t put tape over it, which you should,
thinset and grout and stuff can get in between these patterns.
So make sure that you cover this with tape before you set it on the wall.
So that’s one tip.
Another thing to consider is this: if your corners are not exactly 90°, you may have
to do some minor surgery on this shelf with an angle grinder.
So by that I mean just cutting it down a little bit to make it fit inside the corner.
Schluter also has the SHELF-N, and that goes inside the shower niche.
This is a Schluter pre-fab shower niche, and they come with these inserts, which some people
like and some people don’t like.
Instead of using the insert, you can use a metal shelf inside the shower niche.
So what you would do is install your tile on either vertical side, and then this would
go and sit on top of the tile.
So that’s a really neat option instead of the insert here.
These metal shelves really came in handy in this small shower because: number one, we
didn’t want to install a shower niche, and we wanted to keep the appearance of the shower
big even though it’s small.
All right, so we’re going to end up putting a corner shelf on this seam here.
And we want to go ahead and put this Schluter W SHELF.
So we’re just going to keep it all in line with the same thing here.
We’ll mark this to cut with a wet saw and along with this.
And then we’ll go 16 to the center.
It’s got 6 inches over.
So that’ll go right to the edge of this portion here.
So if we cut this tile, this tile, we get a small piece there.
So that if we cut this, and we’re basically just going to be notching this tile here.
So here we’re just popping the tiles off of the wall because we needed to have them
on the wall first to add our marks where the Schluter-SHELF was going to go.
So you may have to do the exact same thing.
Maybe you’re not necessarily using Herringbone or subway tile, but we cut all these on the
wet saw to get nice, accurate, straight cuts.
And the reason why is because obviously the shelf is perfectly straight.
And now we’re just going to cut this little sliver here.
You can also use an angle grinder, but we’re cutting everything on the wet saw.
And by the way, we’re using the SCX250 diamond blade from Montolit.
This is a great blade for cutting through all these tiles.
And then we back buttered all the subway tile because we wanted to have a really good bond
between the tile and the KERDI.
We’re using the Schluter ALL-SET in this case, and we had directional troweling on
the wall.
Not that that matters for these particular tiles because the thinset’s all kind of
mushed up anyhow.
We’re just aligning the laser level on the top pieces of our tile.
And as you can see here, we’re just sliding the Schluter-SHELF-W into the wall and into
the thinset.
It’s really important that it bonds to the thinset.
And you see thinset ooze out of the little tabs in the shelf.
Now we’re going to be setting all of our tiles like we used to have them on the wall.
Now it’s important, because you’re adding the Schluter-SHELF, that you check for lippage
because obviously there’s thickness to the tabs that are going behind the tile.
But we didn’t find that to be an issue.
We’re just lining up our laser level with this top edge of the shelf because that way
we know that the shelf is perfectly level and in line with these cuts that we made in
our tile.
So there’s a lot of attention to detail when you’re installing one of these on a
wall, like directly in the center of the wall in this particular case.
And again, one of the principles to kind of adhere to is back buttering all these tiles
to ensure that you’ve got plenty of thinset between the tile and the tabs on the Schluter-SHELF-W.
And then we just continued to fill everything in.
Now of note, we did leave a sixteenth inch expansion and contraction joint between the
tiles and the shelf.
We maintained that for the tiles both on the top and the bottom and even between the little
sliver that we cut out in this subway tile.
So we’re treating the Schluter-SHELF-W like we would any kind of transition in a shower.
You need to leave a little 1/16 to 1/8 inch expansion and contraction joint.
And so, anyhow, what we did is we continued to tile the wall here.
And then we applied plenty of thinset to the tabs both on the top and the bottom using
directional troweling.
And if you’re wondering here, we tried to clean the best that we could as we were setting
all the tiles.
But it’s probably best to wrap that shelf with blue painter’s tape of frog tape so
that you don’t get any thinset in the different patterns that are etched into it.
And yes, we did add the little tiny triangles at the left corner there.
And then also, we had a little, tiny triangle that was more in the center of the shelf.
So again, lots of attention to detail with this, but it really turned out well, and we
continued to tile the wall.
The next shelf that we installed was the Schluter-SHELF-E. So this goes into the corner of a tiled shower,
and you use the tabs on the side to mount inside the grout joints.
So what we ended up doing is grouting the walls first, allowing that to set up for 24
hours.
And then we installed the shelf.
Okay, for this shelf, now that where you got everything grouted, you go ahead and remove
a little bit of grout in the grout joint to allow these metal pieces to slide in.
so we’re just going to remove this kind of here to here, and here to here.
So in this case, we ended up using a grout removal accessory with the Fein Oscillating
Multi-tool.
And this is really what we recommend because you can adjust the depth so that you don’t
go through the gout and into your waterproofing.
You want to put silicone into the joint… and this joint.
Once silicone is in all the grout joints, you simply compress the tabs from the Schluter-SHELF
into those joints, and it should sit flush with both walls.
And then you just use the same 100% silicone.
In this case, we’re using Mapesil T from Mapei, but you can really use any 100% silicone
and you just go over top of all the joints between the shelf and the tile.
So in this case, we did our Herringbone tile, we did our main accent wall, and you want
to do underneath as well.
And then that way, it’ll be perfectly sealed and secured to the wall.
It’s amazing that those little tabs, I mean they have a lot of strength, and they do go
into the wall slightly.
But after you get them siliconed, it really is a solid installation.
So we just tooled it with our finger, and then we did the exact same thing with the
Schluter-SHELF-W on our other wall.
We used the Mapesil T, and then we just tooled the joints.
And overall, we really like how these shelves look in this great, little shower.
Give us a thumbs up if you like the tips about the Schluter metal shelves.
They’re great for small showers.
It will really make the shower feel a lot bigger.
And you can also use some inside shower niches if you want to put a shower niche inside the
walls.
So if you are building a Schluter shower, we’ve got plenty of videos showing you how
to do that.
So make sure you check those out.
And of course, if you need our assistance building a bathroom or a curbless shower,
check out bathroomrepairtutor.com.
Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you in the next video.