Mr.Roszak called us with a moisture problem that was at the base of his shower stall in his newly built home. The house itself wasn't even three years old yet and the original builder couldn't be found.

His shower stall leaked around the shower pan and was causing the drywall behind the tile to crumble and mildew. Upon first seeing it, a few obvious flaws in construction were apparent. Firstly, he surely had moisture seeping from where the shower pan met the shower wall, a tell tale sign of it's poor construction.








Secondly, the shower wall tiles were mounted over regular drywall! This is a no-no in our or any book. Shower wall tiles should be mounted over a non-water permeable surface such as a 1/2" hardibacker or cement board in the splash area. We don't even recommend tiling over moisture resistant drywall (greenrock). We only use greenrock for areas that has minimal second hand exposure to moisture, like on ceilings and around a tub/shower enclosure.

There was no telling as to how far underneath the shower tiles the regular drywall extended. We suspected that it might have extended a few feet if not all the way. This wasn't good. Because of the extreme nature of the exposed problem and all the construction flaws that were visually present, this shower repair job required extreme measures: Rip it out and start over.







We began constructive demolition of the shower stall. We carefully dismantled the glass shower enclosure and stripped it clean of any silicone sealant that was on it.

Now we had to remove the wall tiles. We didn't want to destroy the wallpaper that was on the wall over the shower stall for several reasons:

A. The home owner liked the wallpaper and finding an exact match for it would have been next to impossible, being that it's been several years since it was hung.
B. He didn't want to pay for the labor costs of stripping off the old wall paper and rehanging the entire 192 sq.ft. bathroom with new wall paper.

We cut the drywall over the shower tiles before using a sledge hammer to break the tiled wall down. Our plan was to hang the new shower tiles several inches up and over the cut, thus hiding the ugly edge.










We tore down the shower walls to find just two 3'x4' cement backerboards caddy cornered in the lower inside corner of the shower stall. The rest of the inside shower walls was composed of regular drywall. The regular drywall extended into the shower basin a foot or so on both sides of the shower stall and over the cement board from the three foot mark and up.

The shower pan itself had slits cut into it where it met the wall so that the drywall can pass through the shower pan (a hole was thus created on both ends of the curb)- this was the main source of water seepage out of the shower pan.

We added some 2"x4" blocks where the wall joints were going to be. We also blocked underneath the cut edge of the drywall and screwed the drywall to the blocks so as to support the edge. We then hung a 6 mil. plastic sheeting for a vapor barrier.

The curb of the shower pan was formed with cement, and Mr. Rozak didn't want us to use a jack hammer to tear it out due to higher costs. Our other alternative was to tile over the existing tile, which is fine as long as one takes the necessary steps in preparing it for the new tile.








We hung 1/2" cement boards where the tile was going to be set. We let the edges run past the shower enclosure and all the way up to the cut drywall.

Outside the shower enclosure we nailed on 3" strips of greenrock to cover the rest of the exposed studs all the way to the door. We didn't want to shoot the door trim to the cement board with the 18 gauge trim gun, at least for the gun's sake.

The backerboard's joints were filled and sealed with fiberglass tape and thinset, like the tape and bed method of a drywall finish job.

We took our mini-grinder and grinded on the surface of the floor shower tile to roughen it up. This is so that the next layer of thinset would have a rough surface to adhere to.

We used Kerdi, a new 'space age' waterproof membrane material for the shower pan. It comes with inside corners pre-fabed and it is set in a bed of thinset mortar. Over this we troweled on another layer of thinset and smoothed it out flat. We were now ready to tile.









The tiling job itself took several days to complete. The tiles that were used were 12"x12" porcelain ceramic tiles and borders tiles.

We used a 4' level and staged each row with a marked line.

We layed out four tiles on the floor and marked where we needed to cut the corners to accommodate the 2"x2" glass accents for corner diamonds. With a tile pattern, we cut all the tile corners.

We could only set two or three rows of tiles at a time due to the heavy weight of the tiles. If we set too many rows of tiles at once, the plastic/rubber 3/16" tile spacers would start to pinch as gravity tries to cause the tiles to slide down the wall, thus throwing the rows off.

The tiles were set in a rubberized thinset with Microban. This cost slightly more, but it's well worth it from a quality standpoint. 

The shower drain was raised (screw up type) to accommodate the new floor tile height.












After all the tiles were set in place an allowed to dry for 24 hours, we scored all the grout lines to get them deep and ready for grout. We grouted.

Instead of using water in the grout mix, we used a grout enhancer with Microban for added mildew protection. All grout lines were then sealed with grout sealer.

We trimmed the door jamb with new trim and sprayed it with an enamel latex paint. All the shower stall tiled edges were sealed with tub and tile caulk.

The wallpaper was patched with the little scraps that the homeowners had left.

Reassembly of the glass shower stall enclosure was carried out and resealed with clear silicone. We made sure to run a bead of silicone underneath the tracks prior to attaching it to the wall, and then a bead on the side for added water protection.  










When we were done, the bathroom looked good as new and Mr. Roszak had confidence in the quality of work done because he watched it as it happened.

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