19th March 2007

How to Repair a Shower Stall

posted in HowTo |

Recently one of our tenants moved out and upon inspection of the master bath shower stall I was greeted by the sight of this:

Damaged shower stall tile

Basically, the tile grout in the tiles near the floor eventually loses its sealing functionality and moisture seeps through the paces between the tiles causing the drywall backing to degrade. This weakens the tiles and causes even more moisture to get behind the tiles.

Here’s what it looks like behind the tiles. Yick!

Tile removed from shower wall

What I do to repair this kind of problem is remove all the weak tiles until you find strong drywall/wallboard.

Remove any damaged drywall from the back of the tiles. I used a grout knife to scrape any paper and loose Thinset® mortar from the back of the tiles, that way, I can use them again.

Clean back of tile to promote adhesion

Cut to size and screw into place pieces of Durock® concrete wallboard to be used as the new backing for the tile. Durock® is great because it will not degrade if it becomes wet. These days, the entire backing of a shower stall or tub enclosure is usually Durock® or some kind of concrete wallboard.

Install Durock concrete wallboard

Apply and texture a coat of Thinset® mortar to the Durock® wallboard and replace the old tiles.

Reinstall tile

Once the Thinset® is dry (usually overnight) use a good rubberized, sanded grout between the tiles.

Repaired shower stall wall

And that’s it. Good for another 10 years and about $2000 saved from not re-doing the entire shower enclosure.

Oh, how I love property maintenance so.

Shower enclosures to complement most bathroom suites at Victoriaplumb.

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 19th, 2007 at 6:00 am and is filed under HowTo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

There are currently 4 responses to “How to Repair a Shower Stall”

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  1. 1 On April 1st, 2007, Austin said:

    Nice repair job, and a good job with the walkthrough article. I guess it worked out well that you could find matching tiles! I’m curious, in the 3rd photo up from the bottom, it looks like mold was growing behind the tile. What can you use to kill that with..bleach?

  2. 2 On April 1st, 2007, TheLandlord said:

    Austin,
    Thanks for your comment. The tiles I used to repair the shower stall were the original tiles. I just had to be V-E-R-Y careful when I was removing them. As a result, this job took much longer than it would have normally.

    To answer your question about the mold: basically there was a little bit of black mold in the water damaged drywall but I found that as soon as I applied some Thinset to the tile, the bit of drywall that was stuck to the back of the tile came off. In the end, I had to scrape the damaged drywall and old adhesive from the back of the tiles with a grout knife and wire brush.

    Not fun, but like I said in the post, it avoided about a $2000 job by my tile guy.

  3. 3 On November 17th, 2007, Seth said:

    The most toxic and deadly of molds is black, it’s fumes cause permanent brain damage. Not all black molds are the deadly, and maybe that was just mildew, but oy. Here in Texas you have to remove everything in a 3′ radius of the mold, I think. Bleach is good to kill tiny spots on the surface but not in the drywall, not that I would ever ignore Texas law.

    Never use drywall in a wet room. Mold eats the paper. Use cement board in the shower and mold-proof green board (drywall made with fiberglass instead of paper) in the rest. Of course, everyone uses drywall, and the cheapest, most energy-wasting everything else…

    Anyway, good post.

  4. 4 On May 18th, 2008, Christina Rocha said:

    Thanks for sharing. We have the same problem with the tile in our bathroom and we are trying to decide on how to repair it.

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