Three Tiles Kept Falling Off My Tub Wall Until I Looked Behind Them

The Fix and Cost

I pulled twelve tiles.

It sounds dramatic, but once I started prying them up with a putty knife, the decision felt obvious. Two more tiles lifted with almost no resistance, and the drywall behind them crumbled when I pressed it with my thumb.

I cut out a section roughly two feet wide and eighteen inches tall, right down to the studs. The damaged drywall went into a trash bag—it weighed almost nothing, just soft and chalky. The wood underneath was damp but clean. I got lucky; five years of slow drips and no visible mold on the framing.

At Home Depot I grabbed a 3x5 sheet of cement backer board (around $18), a small tub of pre-mixed thin-set ($12), a tube of silicone caulk ($7), and a small box of tile spacers ($5). I already had grout and a notched trowel. Total came to roughly $42, plus another $8 for a carbide scoring blade to cut the backer board.

I screwed the new backer board to the studs, troweled on thin-set, and reset the tiles one row at a time with spacers between them. The next day I grouted. Then I ran a careful bead of silicone along the tub-to-wall seam and smoothed it with a wet finger.

Three hours of work. One seam that should’ve been caulked five years ago.

If you see black mold on the studs or the damage runs bigger than a few square feet, call a contractor. But a small, clean patch? Completely doable.