Shower Repair Products
My home was built in 1984 and when I bought it a couple years ago, the inspector found a few problems that were fixed immediately. I assumed that the rest of the house was then in good shape. Little did I know that there was a pretty large problem in the shower of my master bathroom. In the 80’s, the builders just put tile right over the drywall in the showers and tubs and the general rule for ventilation was either a fan or a window. My builder went with the window, in the shower. Go figure right? Well, that window, coupled with the tile right over the dry wall made for a very messy problem.
My wife was in the shower on Christmas Eve getting ready for church when I hear this yelp from the shower. She had fallen through the wall while shaving her legs! Apparently the grout had gone bad and because of the tile windowsill and the water hitting it and being stationary, water had gotten behind the tile of the shower wall and weakened the dry wall and soaked the insulation. My wife was really lucky to have not landed in the yard! I did not want to hire a professional to come out and do the work for me. I wanted to make sure things were done right this time.
When I went looking for my materials, I found that I could either elect to put tile back up, or go with a plastic insert. Each has their own qualities. The plastic insert was nice because I would not have to worry about tiling and grouting. You take in the measurements that you need and you can insert it quickly. I would need to first repair the wall of course, but that wouldn’t be too much trouble. The plastic is a little easier to keep clean and you won’t have to worry about too much caulking upkeep. The drawback is that it is really obvious that it is plastic. You can feel it when you lean against it, and it just looks different. So, you will need to decide how you want it to look.
My wife wanted to have tile again, so I took her to pick out the tile that she wanted to go in the shower. While at the store I also needed to check on the wall repair. Because I was going with tile again, I couldn’t use just any drywall, like before. We would have had the same problem down the road. I picked up some moisture resistant drywall that is ideal for the kitchen and bathroom where there is high water exposure. This drywall is installed over the studs as regular drywall is installed. I made sure to tear out all the old drywall and cover the entire area with this new board so as not to expose another surface. Once in, a mortar based backer board should be installed over the new drywall to achieve the best tiling surface. This board is applied very similarly to hanging plasterboard. You can tile right on this backer board and once you are done laying your tiles, you can use a line of quarter-round tiles to cover up the edge of the backer board.