That sounds about right for a quick weekend project. 
If the board is shot then I would pull it all down and replace it with the correct wallboard for bathrooms. You’ll spend more time replacing the other tiles later if the backing is shot. the nice thing is that they make spacers now for putting up tile so doing a whole wall isn’t that hard anymore. You use to have to fuss with them while the mastic dried.
Plan B is to pull it all down, put up the correct wallboard and then install a shower kit instead of tiles. This will forever keep water off the wall. People with tile don’t seem to understand that they’re suppose to reseal it from time to time and the inevitable result is the failure of the wall behind it. Tile is something that needs a lot of love to look good and stay sealed.
Don’t let this intimidate you. Putting up wallboard is not rocket science. Take your time, ask questions and do it right. I’ve spent many hours fixing the work of professionals who should have known better. The people who replaced the tub in my mother’s house totally hosed it up. They put the wrong size tub in requiring me to cut extra floor tile to fit the gap and they installed wallboard so that if was free floating next to a stud. Paint was the only thing keeping it together. I had to rip it all out because some lazy (censored) didn’t tack on a dollars worth of wood to a stud.
Hint for the day when you’re near completion. when sealing the edge of the tile to the tub with silicone, tape off the tub and the tile with masking tape. You can zip along with a quick bead of caulk and make one pass with your finger. when you pull up the tape it will be a perfect, razor sharp edge. This goes for your floor tile too.
Wanted to add… even if part of the wall is in good shape you will spend more time trying to mud in a repair patch than you would replacing the whole wall. Been there, done that. What you might find as a time saver is to hire someone to install and mud the wall as a side job. If you take the old wall down and put the new tile in you will be doing the lions share of piece work that doesn’t require any skill but takes a lot of time.
Over the years, I’ve probably seen 200 to 300 tile enclosures with this problem. Whenever mastic was used to attach tiles, it’s commonly referred to as a ‘stick on’ application and was popular in the 60’s. Prior to that a ‘mud job’ was common and the tile was attached to a concrete mixture consisting of 2 scratch coats with the tile attached to the final finish coat. The ‘stick on’ process was destined to fail but some ‘mud jobs’ from the 20’s thru the 50’s have survived providing people could live with the aesthetics.
The reason stick on tile fails usually has nothing to do with the mastic because it’s fairly waterproof. The problem lies with the backer board to which it is attached because once moisture weakens it, it can no longer support the tile and ever so slowly, it dislodges. Many stick on tile enclosures were glued directly to sheetrock and failed within about 20 years but builders liked them because there were quick and cheap. Your backing material does not appear to be sheetrock but possibly rock lath or plaster. I do not believe cement backer board products were available in the 60’s but could be wrong. In any event, it’s never a good practice to glue tile to any type of backer board in a shower/tub application. The reason being that any pin hole opening in the grout allows moisture to penetrate to the backer board.
Another reason for failure involves simple physics. There is a slight air gap between the back of each tile because the lines of glue hold most of each tile away from the backer board. On cold winter days, the temperature of this air is cooler than the tile facing the shower. During a shower, warm water strikes the tile heating the back side coming into contact with the cooler air behind the tile and this creates a little condensation which over times weakens the backer board.
If it were my bath, I would not attempt to repair it but it’s possible and labor intensive. All lower tile would have to be removed up to a point where there is no moisture present in the backer board and the tile is sound. Each removed tile would have to be thoroughly cleaned to remove all residue and glue from the backside in order to reuse it (this could take many hours). Drop or break one tile in the process and you no longer have a match.
Your tile job lasted for about 50 years which is not bad but I believe it’s time to replace it. Your options include all new tile with a cement board backing covered with thinset to which new tile is attached or, contacting a bathroom specialist who can install an overlay onto the tub and walls. Considering the cost to perform the latter, unless this is your only bath, I’d opt to replace all of the tile.
I am a real tile mechanic with 30 years experience. What you have is tile over plaster. Plaster is water soluble and not a good surface for tile in a wet area. The underlying surface is browncoat. If it is in good shape, the browncoat will make a fine underlayment for the tile. Pull all the tile off. Inspect the browncoat. A few cracks are fine. It needs to be structurally sound and reasonably smooth.
Go get some new tile. Reuse that garbage if you want, but it’s not really worth the effort. If you are unskilled, use mastic to set the tile. The only downside to all of this is that the new tile will be slightly set back into the surrounding walls, depending on the thickness of the plaster you removed. You could get a 1/4" backerboard and overlay, using mastic, the backerboard on top of the browncoat if thickness is an issue.
While I would use latex thinset to do this, I recommend mastic for you because it is easier to work with and will be adequate for your needs. Do not build mastic out in thick areas as it will not cure well.
Cheapo solution. Peel the really loose ones off. Get some thinset. Mix it like peanut butter. Use a 2" margin trowel to apply it on the browncoat as smooth as you can. Wash the trowel, use the wet trowel to smooth it again. Let it dry for about 5 hours. Use the margin trowel to shave high spots and bumps off before the thinset gets too hard. Let dry overnight. Set tiles with thinset or mastic. Done.
Wow. You guys were busy, giving great information while I was sleeping like a log.
I would love to have a beautiful tile job in there. But, this is our only bathroom and our only shower. It is a very large shower wall and will take a long time to tile. In addition to that, even with a new tile job on the walls, the tub will still be pink.
If an overlay company could make a custom overlay to fit our existing strange tub, I’d consider it worth the price. I’d consider it even more worth it if they could make the stupid tub a little deeper.
It’s a good thing the rest of this house is so perfect (other than the outlets and switches).
- Replace the floor.
- Do something in the shower.
- Replace the ugly ass counter and sinks***
- Consider doing something to the wallpaper and remaining pink tile.
- Deal with the floor when it becomes an issue again.
** If you have a grandfathered code violation, do you only have to bring it up-to-date if a professional works on it? If we do any work involving our sink/counter/cabinet thing ourselves, can the laundry chute stay?
in many places in the USA if a licensed professional does remodeling then they need to bring it up to code, atleast the part they work on.
for electrical, plumbing and structural much of the code is a safety issue; that is not being up to code is a hazard. what isn’t safety issue is often a durability issue, you might need to repair it soon because it is low quality.
you can be fine legally if you are grandfathered, it was determined you don’t have to change immediately. though you should keep inspecting what you have for deterioration or safety issues.
Thanks johnpost.
Our bathroom has dual sinks on a single counter. Each sink has a cabinet under it and there’s about an additional sink width between them. Underneath, between the cabinets, there is a door, kind of like a book deposit slot at the library. If you pull it open, there’s a laundry chute.
We are very very happy with our laundry chute and don’t want it to go away. Our home inspector said it was grandfathered but if we ever remodeled, we’d have to either close it up, or put some kind of flapper to fill the hole when not in use.
If we do any remodeling to the sink setup, it will only be the counter and sinks so we were wondering if we’d actually have to deal with the cute.
It would be helpful if you go into more detail on the identification of plaster versus the browncoat and how to go about removing the plaster to get to it. If it is indeed 1/4 inch worth of plaster over browncoat the op is working with 2 different and uneven surfaces. If I understand it correctly the tile becomes the final coat as it is pressed into the plaster (allowing for some degree of leveling). Applying 1/4 wallboard will work great for large surfaces but if it’s mated against a coating of plaster the underlying layer has to be fairly level. It’s tough to mate plaster to wallboard because plaster can’t be sanded (at least not the plaster in my house). when I had to cut into the ceiling of my kitchen it was a real bitch mating new wallboard because of the hardness of the plaster. All the finish sanding was done with the patch compound and that was only possible given the large surface area to work with.
it may be if your remodeling was limited to sinks (actual plumbing) in the existing counter then the chute might be able to stay. depends on inspectors interpretation.
the reason the chutes are a problem is fire safety. they provide a quick path for the fire to spread between floors and give extra ventilation to fires. the mentioned flapper may be some fire block put in place when not actually putting clothes through it.
Exactly. I have an idea for the solution for that but I haven’t figured out yet how to put it into action. My neighbor is a contractor. I haven’t met him yet but his wife is very sweet and said to let them know if we need any help. I just might ask him for help designing my idea. I’d like to actually meet him first though, as “Hi, I’m Congodwarf. Want to help me with home repairs” isn’t very neighborly.
A fire would be very very bad upstairs in the Lincoln Log portion of my house so we do want to fix it. We really don’t want it to go away though and if we can’t make a fix work, we’ll have to start throwing clothes down the stairs (I am not coordinated enough to carry clothes down the stairs. Up is hard enough, down is dangerous).
When I worked at Home Depot I couldn’t stand working in the tile aisle (unless it was organizing). I hated selling it. I hated helping people with it. I love tile. I just hated everything involved with installing it. I hate carpet but I loved selling it.
Now that I’m actually installing it in my own home though, I am having a blast. I’m looking forward to being done because my back is killing me and because when the tile is done, it will mean that my new toilet is installed. But, I am enjoying myself so much that as I’m working, I’m designing the counter/backsplash/floor for my kitchen. I just have to convince Adam that it needs to be done, since the vinyl is in perfect condition and although they’re fucking ugly, the counter and backsplash are too.
Since I wasn’t supposed to be doing the actual installing, I got my nails done on Friday. I have to say, I’m amazed that they’re all still on and looking perfect (under the clumps of mortar). I guess it’s true that gel is more durable than acrylic.
It’s almost impossible to give really good advice on remodels, even with photos.
It’s my personal opinion (and a lot of experience behind it) that old tiled showers and tub surrounds with tile falling off have more water penetration than the average inexperienced homeowner realizes. It is imperative, in my opinion, that you get everything off until you see bone dry surfaces, however much that is. That might be just the tile; it might be the backing; it might be all the way to the exterior wall material.
An overlay is fine for the actual repair; you can actually buy overlays in large sheets that are easy to apply. It’s kind of a half-baked approach, but it can work…just make sure you are not enclosing moisture-ridden, soaked walls.
My 2c
From what you’ve said, it sounds like you want a bathroom renovation eventually, so a quick and dirty fix for now would be optimal until you can get everything you want re-done. I wouldn’t worry about losing the laundry chute; I’ve learned from watching DIY shows that you can pretty much do anything you want; you just have to find the way.
phenol-formaldehyde based plywood is not code in most places indoors as far as I know so that is most likely the type you were told not to allow DIY buyers top use
I don’t think I’ve ever had a thread go zombie before. Cool.
I’m pretty sure we were told to not recommend luan. I’m not even sure we sold it. But, it’s been 6 years since I left HD so I could be wrong.
In case anyone is wondering, the shower did get professionally fixed.
? Unless it is some sort of plastic, tile is tile - unless it is somesort of funktastic art project using unglazed terracotta, a 4 inch square of white clay with a good hard glaze is a 4 inch square of white clay with a good hard glaze. As long as the tiles are not damaged, that is. There is no discernable difference between a tile from 1920, 1930, 1940, 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010 or yesterday. I submit that other than removing lead from any particular glaze, commercial Duncan glazes have been the same for the past 100 years, and unless there is something funky going on, commercial slip is commercial slip.
Unless you have an issue with the color or pattern on the tile, reuse the damned thing, just make sure that you chip off any crap on the back that would interfere with setting the tile properly.
Oh jeeze zombie - NM
grandfathered zombie or no
still got the laundry chute?
Yes. We haven’t had anything done with the sink/counter area so it has been a non-issue.