Plaster/Filler - Confused - Retiling Old Plaster Wall

[CNSam]

Hi folks,

Im after a little advice. We've started renovating our old stinky shower room and ripped everything out. The walls used to be tiled up about halfway, these have since been removed and the adhesive has painstakingly been removed too.

As we are on a bit of a budget and it's not the biggest room, we are trying to do this ourselves. With this in mind i'm at a bit of a halting point with the walls. So the walls have a number of holes in and some of them are quite substantial, it's a 1907 built house so expected it to be honest but have taken the plaster back where it sounded hollow behind (debonded?). You can see the images here:


My answer is, what's my next step, do I use filler across the whole of the wall such as "Easi-Fill" or do I go down a bonding plaster route and then a skim finish? We are wanting to retile the walls so the finish doesn't have to be amazing, just somewhat reasonable to apply adhesive too. Also where (if at all) does PVA glue/priming come into it?

There seems to be a lot of conflicting ways of doing what we are trying to achieve so just trying to ask directly.

Any help/guidance would be greatly appreciated!:beer:

 

[cdbe]

I would strip back to brick and render it. If that's beyond you then (assuming it's reasonably flat) I'd fill in the holes with bonding and line with 6mm backer board - either screwed and plugged directly to the wall (if you're confident you can achieve a good fixing into the bricks) or screwed to battens screwed to the wall.

 

[roy c]

I would spread over it with tile adhesive and fill the holes no need to lay it on the main wall too thick, then leave it for a few days then tile onto it,, I would get a tub of Bal Blue Star adhesive, it's expensive but it's the best!!!