Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Tile Conundrum

I don't think the master bathroom's shower was installed properly. Now, I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure the shower floor is supposed to gently slope towards the drain to discourage puddling. We don't have that.

The tiles aren't one hundred percent even, either. One of them, right next to the drain was sorta off-kilter, and it cracked.
"Simple," you say. "Take it out and replace it!" After all, that's what bobvila.com and diynetwork.com told me to do.

So we pry this tile out - not easy, in fact we chipped one of the adjacent tiles - and we've got a confusing sight before us.

There's a thick layer of wet, sandy, crumbling gray stuff under the tile - obviously water had gotten in. But why is it so thick? Tiles are, at most, 3/8" thick, and the length between the black plastic pan and the top of the tile has got to be twice that. Is there supposed to be 1/2" of adhesive under the tile?

And there are more questions. Why does the "pan" have holes in it? Why isn't it sloping towards the drain?

I'm afraid if we just slap a crazy-thick layer of whatever adhesive down, pop a tile on top of it, grout and seal the whole thing, that we're putting a band-aid over a larger problem.

1 comment:

Kim Taylor Kruse said...

Nice macro shot, though I'm sorry to see why you took it. Could the gray stuff be cement board? It kind of looks like it, plus that would explain the holes you see in the membrane (screw holes from anchoring the cement board). It might indeed by wet if the tiles above were cracked. Good luck sorting it out. Have you considered calling a pro?