Will tiles stick to bare plasterboard?

I'm re-doing our bathroom. It's a relatively new house (1995) and the walls are mainly studding with plasterboard on either side of them. Some parts of the walls are tiles and Mrs Avocet wants rid of them. If I pull them off, the adhesive seems to stick better to the wall than to the old tiles.

I've previously been advised to just take out that whole plasterboard section and put new plasterboard up before re-tiling, as this will be quicker and easier than trying to scrape the old adhesive off the existing plaster. I'm confident about screwing plasterboard to studding, but less confident (in fact utterly clueless!) about plastering it afterwards!

I was therefore wondering whether I could just put new plasterboard up and pack between the back of it and the studding to bring it flush with the existing bots of plasterboard, then just put the new tiles on and bring them a bit higher up to cover the joint. Does anyone know if this is likely to work? If not, would I be better putting the new plasterboard on and then getting a plasterer to put plaster on them, to bring them up to the level of the surrounding plaster? If that's the case, how long should I leave the plaster to dry before putting the new tiles on?

tiles stick very well to plasterboard (provided you use adhesive)

plastering, typically skimming, is not needed when new p/b's are going to be tiled. just tape the joins.
if any of your p/b walls are going to be wet walls then they are wrong - backer board or render is best for wet walls.

for now stay away from your complicated proposals for packing out, and post some pics.

Thanks both. I'll post some pics when I get the old tiles off. might be a few weeks as I'm going to be away with work a fair bit.

Even if the tiles come off the adhesive easily, in my experience there's no way you'll get the adhesive off the plasterboard without totally destroying it.

chris1982 said:

tiles stick very well to plasterboard (provided you use adhesive)

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Tee Hee!!