Shower Remodel - Wall Leak Repair

[raytonks]

Hi,

I'm in the process of retiling my master bathroom. I'm currently removing the old tile, and about to get to the walk-in shower. I realized I was going to have a problem with the existing shower drain since the new tile is a thicker stone than the old ceramic tile. The existing floor I'm pretty sure is a standard motar bed. Is there any way to make this work without having to remove the existing floor and totally refloat the floor. I'm not a professional so I'll have to get help for this part of the job if I can't find another solution.

[Davestone]

Usually we unscrew the drain and raise it,for these situations.Are you removing the tile from the floor? That'll change thing.Also, and i hate to bring it up,what led to the shower redo? Leaking,or other problems?And how old is it, and would you be willing to update fixtures, and the shower pan,or the tile backer.Usually it saves money and time to do a more thorough redo,cause other parts of the showers usually need replacing also.Also, look in the Liberry section for valuable shower info.

[Theoderik]

Ray (is that your name?)

If you are capable enough to pull off some tiles, relay the floor, and you're smart enough to realize the drain aint gonna be high enough = you're smart enough to redo the pan if needed. Don't doubt yourself. With the help of this forum, you can do it, no problem.

sw (shawn)

[raytonks]

As far as I know the shower area walls etc are OK. I hoping there might be some type of extender for the drain, or different lengths for the riser. Then I could just demo the area around the drain.

Shawn the problem is I don't want to be that smart.

Dave I'm not sure I understand what your saying. If I raise the drain I'd have to redo the pan right? I am removing the old tile, and then putting down the new thicker tile. You might be right about other parts of the shower needing to be replaced also. I'm not sure at this point but I think I'll know when I start that part of the demo.

[raytonks]

I'm in the process of removing old tile from my master bath. Most of the tile seems to be set on a motar bed base. On the walls around the tub area there was a motar bed over drywall, and I ended up removing the motar bed, and replacing the drywall. All of that is done. A couple of items came up:

1) Where the wall motar beds used to meets the tub deck there are now gaps of about 1" wide. Can I just fill this in with new motar and level?

2) I also had a friend helping me and they got a little too aggressive on the tile removal in a couple of spots on another wall. This left some pretty good holes in that motar bed. I was just going to smooth all of these surfaces out with a skim coat of thinset is that the right way to do it? I was thinking that I should fill the deep areas with the same stuff as #1 first.

3) I went to HD to find thickset motar and I couldn't find any. I did find the motar / topping mix is this the right stuff? Do I need to use an additive?

[Theoderik]

Hi Ray (that your name?)

Yeah, you can use thinset to fill in the holes. However, you have bigger problems than that. You should NOT have used drywall behind that tile. You're gonna have some other boys chip in here in a sec. Check the Liberry thread above.

Welcome and best of luck to ya.

sw (shawn)

[muskymike]

Hi Ray, welcome! Can you post a pic? Hard to picture what you're talking about with the one inch gap. You can use thinset to fill the holes, You want thinset like Versabond from HD.

[raytonks]

Shawn, yeah my name is ray. Sounds like I should have used backer board huh? I could still do that with a little work. It's just a strip about 2' high on 2 walls around the tub. I don't have any tile up yet.

Mike. I can't take a picture right now. Let me try to say it another way. The walls had a mortar bed that was about an inch thick. There was radius trim tile so the bed was needed. I'm using a stone so no radius is available so I just want a flat surface to start with.The wall beds seem to have been done before the tub deck bed. They used to extend all the way down to the tub deck plywood. The tub is a big sunken tub with about a 1' wide strip of deck all the way around. So when I removed the wall beds it left a hole that is the thickness of the deck bed, and the width of the thickness of the old wall bed.

I've said a lot but I'm not sure it's any clearer.

[Theoderik]

Ray, welcome. Yeah - you can fill that joint in no problem. Make it all nice and flat.

and, more importantly, yes, pull off that sheetrock and throw it away. So sorry to tell you bad news. But, that just aint gonna work. Go get some CBU and some fiberglass tape (the kind you can use with thinset (not the stuff for sheetrock) and plan on thinsetting the tape over the joints as you tile.

In addition, did you put a vapor barrier on the wall behind your sheetrock? (can't remember if you said or not - sorry). If not, put one up before you put up the CBU. Just a sheet of roofing felt (15 lb) or plastic poly sheet (6 mil) will work just fine.

If you haven't yet, check out the Liberry link (above) and read about building stuffs. Good reading there.

Good luck.

sw (shawn)

[raytonks]

Shawn. As you can tell I'm kinda a beginner at the wall tiling thing, but I'm not sure why I need to make the changes that your recommending. I want to make sure that you understand that this area is around my tub, but I wouldn't consider it a wet area. There is no shower is this area. We have a separate walk in shower, and that's the next problem.

[muskymike]

Hi Ray, you can put the stone right on the sheetrock. If the wall is not going to get wet. Maybe you can add another layer of dw to meet the tub lip?

[Theoderik]

Sorry Ray - yes, I thought it was a wet area. I agree with Mike, you'll be fine. If you ARE concerned, you could throw up some RedGard on the bottom of the sheetrock near the tub in case water DOES splash up there. But, you should be ok if'n it stays dry.

sorry for the concern.

sw (shawn)

[raytonks]

OK.

Thanks for the help guys. I'm going to start the demo on the shower now so I'll see what that uncovers.

[raytonks]

Hi All,

I'm continuing work on my walk in shower remodel. All of the old tile is now removed, and I'm trying to decide how much more I still need to redo before starting to work on the actual install.

I have a glass block window at the end of the shower. Below that window was a sill that had a leak. I starting removing this area an of course it was worse than I thought it was going to be. I removed the mortar bed, and the 2x that were the sill. 2x material was totally rotted. The drywall below the mortar bed was soaked. I then cut out the wall mortar bed and drywall down to above the shower pan. I cut off one of the studs that had damage. I'm not sure how much of this wood I really need to take out. I'm also not sure exactly how to fix the exterior wall plywood. I was thinking I could just remove the really bad plywood, and apply some type of sealer since the exterior wall is brick. See photo if it worked.

Any comments on what all needs to be done would be great. I want to make sure I don't have any problems down the road.

[The.Handyman.llc]

Starting from scratch is always the best option(imo).