Removing ceramic tile from shower surround

[Sean]

I have a shower and adjoining whirlpool tub. The walls and floor are ceramic tile. It looks as though it is just mortared onto the drywall, but there may be a cement backer board on a couple of the shower walls.

I want to tear it out and update the tile. If I had a heavy duty chisel and a dead blow hammer, would I be able to chip out the tile without too much difficulty? I would like to get it out without having to raise the whirlpool tub out of its setting.

On the walls of the shower, I am thinking perhaps the easiest thing would be to cut around the top of the tile (where it is just drywall) and tear out the drywall to the studs and replace the old drywall then add the new tile.

I know this is going to be a tough job, but am I opening up too big of a can of worms????

Sean

[TDHofstetter]

The drywall removal is DEFINITELY the easiest where you can do it. That may even work best where it's bonded to cement board - although it may take a fair amount of work with a hefty prybar to get the nails / screws to yank through the cement board.

Be sure to cover anything you want to keep with as much cardboard as you can, 'cause falling tiles can chip heck out of anything softer then them (which amounts to nearly everything we can imagine).

For the tiles that need to be broken, you may get the best results from a new (never resharpened) cold chisel or masonry chisel and a smallish STEEL-HEADED hammer. The chisel really shouldn't be very big, even - what you want is a sharp edge on it. That concentrates the sharp blow on a very very small area, increasing the likelihood of fracturing the tile. The bigger or duller the chisel, the less likely you are to fracture the tile. Too, the STEEL hammer will give you greater impact than the deadblow will.

-- Tim --

Things are bad...
Last night my fantasy girlfriend
Dumped me
For an imaginary guy...

:)

[dbriski]

If you have an air compressor, an air chisel makes short work of tile off of concrete. Not sure if that would work on walls but I would just rip the walls down to the studs anyhow. Maybe if you could put up a picture we could see exactly what you are working with. As Tim said a masonry chisel and a baby sledge will do the work.