Here's today's question: What's one of the best ways to install a floating shower bench?
Today we're going to show you the Wedi Sanoasa floating bench; it's really cool. We just
got it. This is not an installation video. We're going to be installing it later on.
This is a high level overview to show you what it is, how you can install it, and why
it's so cool. All right, as you can see here, this is a
standard shower bench. We showed you how to frame this out, and we're also going to share
with you how to waterproof this in a video. Now here's the deal: if you don't want a standard
shower bench like this, you can install a floating one, but you need to have a few things
in place. This is the Sanoasa; let's take a look inside.
As you can see here, it's called the Wedi Sanoasa Shower Bench 4, and the 4 because
it's almost 4 ft long, so 47 ¼ x 15 inches deep by 3 1/8 inch thick. As you can see this
is a straight bench; it's self-supporting; and it's for niche installation only. I'll
show you what that means. So if you flip the box over, it actually has Ikea-like instructions
on it. This shower bench can only be installed if
you have two walls like this. So you have a wall on the left and a wall on the right.
For example, if we take this off of here, you can see that our bench setup would not
qualify for this particular model here. Now if we wanted to, we could create a wall for
here, a pony wall. So you would have a pony wall on this side of the bench, and you'd
have your main wall over here. And you could create a floating bench in that situation.
Like I said, we're not going to show you how to install this today. We will do it in another
video. You can cut this shower bench down to size,
which is great. They're showing in this picture, which is picture no. 3, that you do need to
have two walls to install it. It comes with these metal brackets, which I'll show you
here in a second. You apply Wedi joint sealant to the bracket; you smooth that out; and then
what you do is you adhere those brackets to each wall, so the wall on the left and the
wall on the right. You screw those brackets through the Wedi that's on the wall and into
wood blocking that's in between your studs. The next step is to add joint sealant to the
top of the bracket; add joint sealant to the back and side of the bench; and then place
the bench on top of the brackets. They give you mesh inside this kit. You apply
the mesh to everywhere where the bench meets your Wedi backer board. Apply more joint sealant
to the top of that mesh and smooth it out. And then that's it. You go to wait 24 hours,
and you can tile the bench. As you saw, the installation is very straightforward.
Now, let's take a look at the bench. The picture on the front of the box is a representation
of what the bench could look like in a shower. As you can see, they tiled the entire bench
here. All right, let's open up this box. Okay, so this is the bench itself; pretty
substantial. So the back of the bench, as you can see, has all foam, and you would apply
the joint sealant to the entire back of this and then to each side of the bench. And they
clearly tell you that this is the top of the bench.
So for example, this is the top of the bench; this is the front face. And if you wanted
to, you could cut the bench to size so that it could fit in your niche area right here.
These are the accessories that you get with the floating shower bench: you get a tube
of Wedi joint sealant; this is the mesh; it looks like fiberglass mesh; they give you
screws for mounting the brackets to the wall; and, these are the two brackets right here:
one, two, and I think that they're made out of aluminum.
So why would you want a floating bench instead of a traditional bench in a shower? These
days a lot of people are installing linear drains. And one of the things that you could
do-and this came up with a conversation I had on the phone with a customer-one of the
things that you could do is you could install a floating bench on the far side of your shower,
and you could hide the linear drain underneath the floating bench. Instead of having a traditional
drain like this one here, that linear drain would be in the far end of the shower and
be totally hidden, for the most part, by a floating bench. So that's pretty cool.
So again, these brackets, they get mounted to the top of the Wedi backer board, and they
get screwed into the studs or the wood blocking that's inside the wall. And then the bench
would just sit on top of those brackets, so it would be a floating-it wouldn't be this
high, obviously-it'd be a floating bench that you could sit on.
What do you think? Would you rather have a floating shower bench or a traditional shower
bench? Let us know down in the comments. And if you're interested in the Sanoasa or
any other Wedi shower kit, you can always learn more about those over on bathroomrepairtutor.com.
You can just go right there; check them out for yourself. If you need help choosing the
right kit for your shower remodel, we can assist you with that too.
Thanks for watching today's video, and we'll see you in the next one. Take care.