Tile shower rebuild in Southeast Michigan

A tile shower rebuild is not a retiling job. The tile is the part you can see and it is almost never the part that failed. Underneath it sits a pan and a waterproofing layer, and when that layer gives up, water passes through the grout, through the mortar bed and into the floor structure without ever showing on the surface. Wright’s takes these back to the substrate, rebuilds the waterproofing properly, and tiles over something that will hold.

Why tile showers leak without looking wet

Grout is not waterproof and was never intended to be. In a correctly built shower, water passes through the grout, hits a membrane behind or beneath the tile, and drains away through weep holes at the drain. The membrane does the work. When it tears, punctures or was never installed properly, the water keeps going into the mortar bed and then into the framing.

That is why the first sign is rarely in the shower. It is a stain on a ceiling below, a soft patch of floor outside the curb, or a musty smell in a closet backing onto the wet wall. By then the failure is years old.

The signs that mean the pan has gone

A few tiles loose in one corner is a repair. Several of the following together is a rebuild. Tiles sounding hollow when tapped across a whole wall. Grout that keeps cracking in the same joints after being repaired. A floor outside the shower that flexes. Efflorescence, the white powdery deposit that appears when water moves through a mortar bed and leaves minerals behind.

We tap the walls, check the floor, and look at the ceiling in the room below before saying which one you have. If it is a handful of joints and the substrate is solid, a regrout and tile repair is the right and much cheaper answer, and we say so.

What a proper rebuild actually involves

• Tile, mortar bed and old pan removed down to the framing and subfloor
• Rotted framing, blocking and subfloor cut out and replaced with sound material
• A new sloped base and a bonded or sheet waterproofing membrane, flood tested
• Cement backer board on the walls, taped and sealed at every seam and corner
• Tile set on the new substrate, grouted, and every movement joint run in silicone

The flood test, and why we will not skip it

Once the pan is built and before a single tile goes on, the drain gets plugged and the base is filled with water and left. If the level drops, something is wrong and it gets found while it is still cheap to fix. If it holds, the waterproofing is proven rather than assumed.

This adds a day to the schedule and it is the single most important day in the job. Any shower built without one is a shower where the waterproofing was taken on faith. Most of the failures we tear out were built that way.

What we usually find under an eighties shower

Southeast Michigan has a lot of tile showers built in the seventies and eighties on hot mopped or lead pans, and many of them were built well for their time. What we find most often is the pan intact but the corners torn where the liner was folded rather than preformed, or a drain assembly whose weep holes were packed solid with mortar on installation day and have never drained since.

Newer failures look different. A shower tiled directly onto greenboard or regular drywall was doomed from the start, and we find that more often in flips than in original construction. Neither can be patched into something reliable.

Rebuild, or remodel the whole room

Once the shower is open to the framing, the marginal cost of changing the layout, the floor tile and the vanity drops considerably, because the demolition and the mess have already happened. If the rest of the room is the same vintage as the shower, this is the moment to decide.

Our renovation side handles that work as a full bathroom remodel, and a curbless entry, a bench or a larger footprint all belong in that scope rather than in a repair. A walk in shower build is a design project with its own drawings. This page is about rebuilding what is already there in the same footprint.

Building it so somebody can use it later

While the walls are open is the only cheap moment to add solid blocking behind the tile. Blocking costs almost nothing now and means a grab bar can be set anywhere on that wall in ten years without opening anything. We put it in as a matter of course on rebuilds for anyone planning to stay in the house.

The same logic covers a bench, a niche at a reachable height, and a valve placed where somebody can turn the water on before stepping in. None of it reads as accessibility work and all of it is. Planning a house to stay in is mostly a series of decisions like this one.

Lead paint and older bathrooms

Federal rules require that renovation disturbing painted surfaces in a home built before 1978 be performed by a certified firm following specific work practices. A shower rebuild opens walls and disturbs paint, and a large share of the bathrooms we look at in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti are in that age bracket. We scope this at the estimate stage so it is a known cost rather than a surprise on the second day.

Living without the bathroom while it runs

A rebuild is days rather than hours, and the shower is out of service for all of them. Thinset, waterproofing and grout each need cure time and none of it can be rushed without risking the result. In a one bathroom house that is worth planning around properly, and we will give you the sequence before we start so you know which days matter.

Demolition is also the loudest and dirtiest day of the job. Removing a mortar bed means breaking it up, and it comes out by the bucket. We contain the route in and out, protect the floor along it, and take the debris with us rather than staging it in your driveway for a week.

When the rebuild sits inside a bigger list

• An inspection report flagging moisture readings on the wall behind the shower
• A listing where a failed shower is the item buyers will price against you
• A water damage check covering supply lines and shutoffs in the same room
• A fan that vents outside, so the new tile lives in a room that dries
• Fresh silicone at every movement joint once the new tile has cured

Where we work across Southeast Michigan

Rebuilds run from our Ypsilanti shop across Washtenaw, Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Livingston and Monroe counties. Ann Arbor and Plymouth come up most, and the tile showers there are frequently the original ones.

Find out which one you have

Tell us what the ceiling below the shower looks like and whether the floor outside it moves. That usually decides repair or rebuild before anybody comes out. View our Portfolio to see the tile work our crews do, or contact us now for a free quote. For a room that may need more than the shower, book a consultation.