Shower Wall Tile – Best Installation Practice
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I am planning a new house and my latest, of many, confusions, regards the best practice for shower wall tile installation. My lack of understanding is compounded by what I see in my current house, which supposedly is a well-built house.
In one of my bathrooms, a few tiles popped off the left wall of the shower exposing how the tiles were installed, a photo is attached. What I see does not look good, but maybe it is, because I don’t know what “good” looks like. However, there is another, to me, weird thing. The tiles on the right wall of the same shower were clearly installed in a different way. A photo of this is also attached.
Is there a reason why two different tile installation methods would be used in the same shower? Is there a consensus for the best practice for shower wall tile installation?
Replies
If I’m seeing this right,
The left side was “brought in” to fit the door upper hardware?
I looked several times while watching a ballgame and it looks like they had to pack out those flat on the wall tiles……crap job and they fell off.
Can you post the whole front of the shower door set up?
Here is a view of the shower front. There are 4 showers in the house and the tile for all of them are varying distances from the wall and all with cracks in a 7 year old house.
There must be a better way to do tile.
It looks like the opening before the door was installed was going to be too big so the packed out those tiles on the left, at least the ones on the return wall.
Most of those door units have a track on each side that the finished posts slide into……allowing a variable rough opening. Easy to get it right. Custom glass are measured after tile and fit right.
What should have been done?
The left side wall was packed out with maybe the cement board, which seems to have been done to fit the door panels…..beats me.
I enlarged your picture of the right side, there is a channel to fasten the door panel. Can’t tell if there’s one on the left side.
If they had made the shower less deep, the left side tile would not have had to turn the corner.
Edit: I guess the answer is pretty simple. All of it was done wrong.
I'm about to DIY a tile shower and this gives me a low bar to pass!
If you really want to know how to build a shower look into schluter products and watch their training videos or take their free classes.
I agree. Schluter is the best way. A little more costly but you get what you pay for
There's more to the crap installation that the photos show. The actual tile substrate and tile installation is terrible and isn't close to tile industry standards. Start here for proper installation methods: https://tcnatile.com/resource-center/faq/ceramic-tile/
Don't dig too far into the existing installation- you won't like what you find, especially with the shower floor.