Hi everyone. I have a problem and have no idea of the best way to fix it. I have no experience with tile, so bear with me! Ha-ha
First some info: I bought my house about a year and a half ago. A few months after buying it, pieces of the grout in the shower started to come free. It is only happening in the “wettest” area of the shower. There is a glass block window in the shower and the problem areas are mainly on, and below, the window shelf.
I have been trying to educate myself on-line today, and have learned that mastic is a frowned-upon method of attaching tile in shower. Well, the previous owner left behind some extra building supplies. Paint, extra tile, and most importantly (maybe) a tub of mastic. He tiled the kitchen and bathroom floor as well, so maybe the mastic wasn’t used in the shower.
Anyway, for now I have been applying a “band-aid” to the grout as it comes loose. I have been removing the loose grout and sealing the gaps with DAP Kwik Seal Kitchen and Bath Adhesive Caulk.
If your opinion is that mastic was used, and that it should all be torn off and retiled (I have seen this advice on other sites) that is just not an option for me right now. I just don’t have the funds for that. Not to mention it would be a shame. He did a pretty decent job with the tile, at least aesthetic-wise.
Now my questions:
Do I remove and re-grout the entire shower, or only the problem areas?
If only the problem areas, I would assume I should seal the other areas? Advice?
How can I determine if mastic was used? Does it matter?
Do I just keep-up with my “band-aid” method until I can afford to fix it correctly?
This is getting longer than I had anticipated. I’ll stop now and let you digest it. Ha-ha. I am going to try and include some pictures in this post. We’ll see how that works out! If you click on the pictures link, you can see a close-up picture of the cracking grout…I hope!
Thank you in advance!
-- Schmidty