Have you retiled a bathtub yourself?

[vettechick99]

We need to replace the faucets/shower head in our bathtub that is 40 years old so this gives me an excuse to look into retiling the bathtub. I know labor is the most expensive part of tiling and I plan to ask my dad to do that. I'm just wondering about the other expenses that go into tiling that I might encounter. Frankly I'm scared of what I'll find behind the tile that might be a money pit.

What was your experience? Thanks for any insight.

 

[NotUrsula]

Well, it took forever, but yes. In our case, we had to break out concrete-set tile first, so if you don't have to do that you're way ahead. (Concrete-set is a technique that hasn't been done in about 50 years in most places; it means that the tile was set directly into a 1 inch thick bed of wet concrete.)

I used a set of instructions that I got from Family Handyman magazine. It calls for putting up the wall in three layers: tar paper underlayment over the studs, then concrete board, then the tile set onto the concrete board. Walls are just about leakproof done this way if you are careful. The hardest part was getting the concrete board perfectly level on the walls, because our walls are not plumb.

We cheated a little bit on the ceiling of the shower enclosure, but every construction person who has seen it says it was a brilliant idea. We bought linoleum countertop surface material that matched the color of the tile and put that up with cove adhesive on the ceiling, then rimmed it with tile and sealed it. It was a LOT easier than setting a large field of tile straight up on the ceiling.

 

[Lanshark]

I'm interested in this also. I have a 35 year old tub I want to pull out along with the tile and replace with a walkin shower.

 

[FergieTCat]

How hard is it to re-caulk? Can I do it myself?

 

[AKL_Megs]

How hard is it to re-caulk? Can I do it myself?

Places do this pretty cheap... we were considering it when we were thinking about purchasing another house. It runs about $200 - $300. All they do is re-grout, though. The tiles remain.

 

[FormrCastMbr]

My husband retiled our shower in the house we just sold. He never did it before and it was a lot of work but it came out beautiful. He researched a ton and used a waterproofing system called Kerdi. I remember the Tile Your World book was like his bible and he was on this forum constantly.


http://www.johnbridge.com/