Bathroom tiles

When I first bought my house, I had a building inspection done. The building inspector pointed out a patch of tiles that were bowing away from the wall in the shower, and warned me that the wall behind the tiles could be damaged if they weren't fixed.

About six months after moving in I finally found time to remove the problem tiles. Much to my relief, there was no sign of any damage to the wall. However I was left with a large bare patch on the wall, covered only with old tile cement. In order to continue to use the shower, I hung a plastic drop sheet over the bare section. This was very effective in protecting the wall from water, but not really comfortable to shower with!

In addition to replacing the damaged section of tiles, I wanted to extend the section of tiles further along the wall, as water from the shower was wetting the paint work next to the tiles. I didn't want a strip two tiles wide of a different color, so I removed the tiles next to the new section as well. I had a lot of trouble removing the tiles from above the damaged section, next to the new section, so in the end I decided to go for a diagonal edge, so that the two different colors would meet in a zigzag.

I tried to find tiles of the same size and colour to match, and was unsuccessful. The old tiles were matt beige, and I couldn't find anything similar. In the end I decided to go with some tiles that were the same size, but white gloss. I felt that a bit more contrast would look better than tiles that were nearly, but not quite, the same color.

Another problem was that the tiles were not attached to the wall with tile adhesive, but with some sort of cement, which was about half a centimeter thick. To get the level of the new tiles even with the old ones, I needed to use the same stuff. I found out what the stuff was called (tile cement :)) when I saw a mural that a friend was creating on her front porch, using broken tiles and tile cement. It was a very cool mural, I wish I had half that much artistic talent!

After locating and purchasing the replacement tiles, I still needed to remove the old tile cement from the concrete wall. This was a very long, slow, labour intensive task, involving a cold chisel and a hammer. I discovered after a while that heating the tile cement with a heat gun would make it more brittle, and therefore easier to remove, but the cement was still not a lot softer than the concrete I was chipping it off. The dust and grit factor were also large!



After removing the tile cement, I used an electric sander to sand down the wall. I then washed the wall thoroughly to remove any dust.

I mixed up some tile cement, and using a trowel I re tiled the first section.


Once the tile cement had had time to dry, I mixed up some grout and grouted between the tiles. I used a grout squeegee to apply the grout and I found that to be invaluable.


After the grout had dried, I used a silicone caulking agent to fill in expansion joints all around the re-tiled section. This will hopefully prevent the tiles from being damaged by building expansion and contraction. I then repeated the tiling and grouting for the second, higher section of tiles. Once everything had dried, I repainted around the edge of the tiles. Finally, I coated all of the tiles in the area, old and new, with tile sealer. This is a very thin, very nasty smelling liquid that can be painted onto tiles and grout to improve dirt resistance and water proofing.

Here is the finished result!



All up it was a lot of work, but I am happy with the result.