Help! Shower stall mess!


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Old 10-02-07, 11:26 AM
J
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Help! Shower stall mess!

While removing old grout in my shower stall, I noticed some of the tiles at the bottom of the shower were loose. I pried a few off and noticed that behind the tiles, the wallboard had rotted out and is crumbling and it smells like mildew. Just the two bottom rows are bad, it seems like the third row up is fine. How do I go about fixing this problem without hiring a contractor and going into debt. I am a reasonably good do-it-yourselfer so I should be able to manage this job.

Please advise - my husband will be home soon and I'd like to give him a solution to the problem (I'm the one that will be fixing it - not him).
 
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Old 10-02-07, 04:54 PM
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It is sort of an obvious solution: You have to remove the tiles, cut out the bad wallboard, piece in new, and retile. You will either have to laboriously scrape off grout carefully off the used tiles (can be difficult and nerve wracking) or try to match with new tiles as good as you can. Recommend not having wallboard replacement joint line up with grout line. Have the wallboard halfway between tiles.

Be sure to grout seal according to directions on bottle, afterwards. The grout is the obvious weak link in any tile job.

If you sealed it good, the sealer holds up. The first coat causes the grout to temporarily gray as it gets wet. You know then that it is soaking in. Once dry it goes back to white if that is your grout color, let's say. Then when you subsequently try to reseal at some date in the future, you may notice that it does not get gray this time, and instead sheets water, meaning your first application has still held up! (
 
 

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