I just bought my first house and the bathroom tile is mismatched and half painted and broken/falling off. The tub has a shower surround up to the ceiling. The tile comes up half way on the wall. House was built in 1940.

I tried to take one of the permanent ceramic tiles off to see what was underneath and it was very hard to get off, had to basically pound/smash it off, and it looks like it may be concrete under there. A lot of debris came out with the tile and looked like it was set into the wall pretty far.

I am not sure what to do about this. Do I have to strip the wall down to the studs and put up another wall? If so are there any good resources someone could point me to in order to get instructions on how to do this myself?

Any help would be much appreciated!

 

Are you familiar with plaster? That can seem like sand-mix concrete. And what can happen is the plaster comes off with the tile and maybe even what the plaster was adhered to.

I will say more if I see that you respond. (I have gotten gun shy with repsonding to first ever posters, as many look for instant answers and fly around the net to various message boards and never come back, me thinks.)

 

I really want to hear what you have to say about this. I need any help I can get and will be checking for posts regularly regarding this issue. I need to start working on this ASAP and have not found many detailed or descriptive answers on the web.

Thanks so much for replying and I hope to hear from you soon!

 

A house of this vintage is probably gypsum plaster over gypsum lath though it could still be over wood lath. In some parts of the country it was customary to install the lath then felt paper then woven wire lath then Portland cement plaster for showers.
What part of the country are you in?

The tile were then set with mud over the cement plaster. This sounds like what you have. You can probably skin the tile of of the base if you get a few off then use a chisel and peel the tile from the base. This will leave some setting mud behind and it will take some of the base off with the tile.. Then you can fill the voids with a quicksetting Portland cement patching material and retile.

It might be less work to remove the whole thing to the studs. Then you have several options to tile. You can put up tile backer board and tile or you can have a plasterer give you a new Portland cement plaster base and set the tile with thinset mortar. If you think you might want to replace the tub this is a good time to do that and to update the tub shower control.

 

Per tightcoat's response, let us know what you think you have there and we might better advise which way would be the most novice friendly way to redo.

Funny we should be discussing tile, because my parents went away on a trip and I am in charge of looking in on the house, and they have a (4 inch typical) tiled surround, and IT is only over sheetrock! The shower is used to the best of my knowledge everyday. The house is about 37 years old and the tile is original to that date. Yet no grout cracks nor discolored caulk around the top of the tub.

About 8? years ago I had to section out around the mixer and spout and redo and recaulk the whole tub. But since then it has remained perfect. I admire my caulk job as it looks too perfect to be hand done, and I think to myself that if I did it today, I'd be worse at it.

Anyway, I keep reading how horrible it is to use sheetrock. But here is an example of how it has held up quite well.

 

Thank you so much for your responses!
I am not sure what is under there and don't know exactly how to find out for sure, but it looks like horizontally laid layers of something like concrete (gypsum like you said probably). So are the wooden studs behind this layer? If so how do i go about removing all of that stuff to get down to the studs.
Also, if i didn't want to re-tile and just wanted to paint the wall how would I go about that? The tile only goes up half-way so would I need to take down the whole wall down to the studs?
I am in Ohio by the way and yes I would like to replace the tub/shower. It is tiled as well but the tiles are behind a tub surround that goes all the way up to the ceiling. Does anyone know how to easily remove this as well to get to the underlying tile and walls?
And does anyone know of any resource/website that might give me detailed and descriptive steps on how to remove the tile and put up a new wall?
Thanks!

 

Taking down the wall is the easy part. Sledge hammer works well with plaster/lath.

Your studs will be behind all this. Once you are down to studs, you can install your wallboard or cementboard.

I'm off to bed now, so I gotta keep this short.

 

does anyone have more detailed instructions on how to go about this other than just to smash my walls down? also, does anyone have instructions on how and what to put up after the demo... if i want to paint the walls? any help would be much appreciated! even if you can just re-direct me to a new source. i am not a handy person, but need to save money by doing it myself, since i have gotten estimates anywhere between 2k$ and 20k$ and that is waaaaaaayyyyyyyyyy too much!

thanks!

 

Is it plaster you have under the tile? Plaster resembles mortar or sandy concrete.

I feel sorry for you because this work is rather elementary -when you know how things are built, and have done this before.

The studs are not going anywhere unless of course you whack away at them with a sledge hammer. You don't want to be doing that.

You simply want to scrape and pry off the tiles and plaster, perhaps smashing BETWEEN the studs, getting it down to the studs, which are going to be spaced about 16 inches apart, center to center, and with about 14 1/2 inches between them.

Now you said in your first post that the shower surround goes up to the ceiling and the tiles only go halfway up. If that is true, then what is above the tiles?: Just painted wall?

Exactly what is the height of the tiles from the top edge of the tub to the top of the tile? Is it 4 feet right on the nose? 5 feet? 6 feet? If it is more than 4 feet, then I would mark the wall horizonatlly, all the way around on the 3 sides, up about 6 inches higher. Then I would cut that line. If plaster, you can use a chisel and hammer and make sharp chisel blows going along 1 or 1 1/2 inches at a time, (or whatever width your chisel is) at a time until you have your line cut. This makes very little powder mess to breathe, compared with trying to saw that plaster in a confined bathroom (you'd need respirator, if you sawed it!), and if a window is in the bathroom, a box fan set up in the window to suck out the powder. The idea of cutting the wal there is to save the wall above and not have to deal with taping a corner joint up by the ceiling.

I'm going to stop now until you respond.

And believe me, there are plenty builder guys here who should be able to steer you through this. Personally I was on a roll some years back and in fairly quick order had to put in 22 tub surrounds in rentals, entailing all this gut out stuff I speak of. And I put bath fans in, new tub mixers, all kinds of stuff.

You want to protect your tub finish from plaster sand. Nothing is worse than scratching up the tub than that sand! (short of a diamond). It is not so much that some sand powder falls in the tub, is it you being in the tub, grinding it in with your feet. So it does no good to lay a tarp in there if you allow sand to get under the tarp and you grind it in with your feet. Keep a vac handy at all times and use it.

 

It is plaster i believe. Behind the tile and the cement that holds the tile to the wall is a thick layer of concrete-looking horizontally laid, thin little layers. I assume that I am just supposed to smash through these layers?

The tile outside the tub area goes from the floor to 4' high. Same in the tub area, but it and the wall are covered with one of those vinyl tub surrounds that goes up to the ceiling. How should I go about removing this vinyl surround that is caulked around, so that i can get at the tile and wall beneath it?

I am sure these are very simple questions but i really have no idea what i'm doing and i appreciate all of your comments and suggestions. Thanks so much for the last post... it was very informative. Although I am not sure what you meant by this: "The idea of cutting the wal there is to save the wall above and not have to deal with taping a corner joint up by the ceiling" what is a corner joint and why is it difficult to tape up?

And you are saying that I should cut this line around the whole bathroom to avoid going up to the ceiling? Won't the stuff behind the wall that is left above be falling out onto the floor? It seems to crumble everywhere even when I am trying to be gentle with it.

Thanks again!

 

You are fretting way too much about this. The best thing to do is start in the center of the area you want to remove with a hammer. Wear safety classes! Get a hole in the middle of the area you want to remove then once you have a hole you can figure out what is the best way to remove what is left. It might be with a flat pry bar, a wrecking bar, your gloved hands or maybe just more work with a hammer. When you get close to where you want to stop then tell us what you have and we can tell you what to do from there.

In the time you have spent worrying about this you could have had the demolition done and the new wall in place.

SOMETIMES THE ONLY WAY TO GET A JOB DONE IS TO START!