fixing shower tiles

My apologies..what I bought was not a grout repair kit, but something the Home Depot tile salesperson showed me called "Mape" it comes in a small
1 pt. container for $ 7.95, and it is an adhesive to use both behind the tile to adhere it back to the wall, and between the tiles...it is both adhesive for the back and a grout for in between. Justs go to DIY (do it yourself network) or go to Home Depot, and ask about this product.... it worked out great for me.

I was re-caulking my tub and while removing the old caulk, one of the tiles actually popped out...and I was able to do put it back using this product.

 

it's only been a couple weeks...wait til it gets cold outside again and that tile will be in the tub again.

 

Sorry to hear that....the tile salesman recommended it.

 

he works in the tile department at the homedepot.

Mape is an italian product and used throughout the tile industry....you may be ok.....only time will tell.

 

so i popped off a couple tiles.

there are probably more than i'd like to do myself, but i dunno.

i wasn't sure what i'd find behind them, but it looks really good - a nice clean layer of what i'm guessing is concrete. my house was built in 1936 and is mostly lathe and plaster. i guess the shower is from that era as well. no gypsum boards or anything here.

so that's the good news. the bad news is that the techique used to adhere the tiles to the backing was apparently the oreo method. there's a wad of mortar on the back of each tile instead of a thin layer. looks like each tile was slathered up with mortar, then plopped in place. i doubt there's any way i'm getting this mortar off of these tiles, so i guess i gotta buy some new ones. these are like quite old. i hope color matching won't be a problem.

the floor and the cieling are quite solid, so i really just need to redo the walls and probably only halfway up (like figure the where water's been hitting). the corners are all fine (they're curved pieces that go from one wall to the other) so i'd really only be dealing with flat areas. the drag, tho, is that some of the tiles look to have been cut to fit. bleah.

 

more likely to be coming off of the tile it's applied to actual backer board and not drywall or greenboard

 

Hey man, just clean up everything as good as possible, buy new tiles if need be, color match, and get em' back in there, a problem your going to run into is if you have colored grout, very tough to match up, it's going to look like a repair job, either way, probably. Also, mortar works good, but I've found using mastic is good for repairs, this is an adhesive that comes in what looks like a tube of caulk, splurp some on your tile, make sure the backing is clean, no debris, make sure you've got some duct tape to hold it up there for 24 hrs., then grout. Sounds like you got it, half the battle with home improvement is just doing it. I've just completly remodelled my master bath, and have recently done this, good luck.

 

update...

a couple tiles are broken and need replacement. the color (or more importantly, the finish) is too tough to match so i'm thinking of going with an accent color in a few spots that matches another accent color in the rest of the bathroom. i've got like 300 tiles that need to be replaced. the backing is plaster, it seems. i talked to a contractor about it and it turned into a replace the whole thing pitch, so i'm just gonna do it myself. i bought a grinder to strip the mortar off the back of the tiles.

hopefully, i'll find the time and motiviation to actually sit down and do it. stripping the tiles is going to be the most annoying part. i built a little rig to set a tile in and hold it in place so i can run a grinder over it. gotta strip off all the grout before i do it though or they don't fit the thing.

 

Another thing to keep in mind is you can always PermaCeram (spraying a light ceramic coating over all the tiles) after you get the tiles up, so at least they will be the same color. Kind of 10 yr. quick fix. Sounds like you got it going on, good luck.