Quickest way to fix wall ready for tiling

[RKB]

Just been going over the job I need to do (fit new bath suite and retile), and a thought has struck me.
I fully expect when I bolster the old tiles off, some of the plaster will come of with the tiles. If that happenned, I planned to make good with something like hardwall backing plaster to restore the levels, then plaster on that. The problem I've got is that I only have a couple of days to do this, so I could only give the plaster about 24 hours before having to retile. I thought about going tile on tile, but the new tiling needs to go all the way up to the ceiling, where the old tiles stop halfway.
Any suggestions on what material I could use instead of backing plaster -
maybe I'm worrying too much, but ma in law invalided, so needs access to bath sooner rather than later.

 

[david and julie]

I was recently in an elderly persons flat whose bathroom had recently been refurbed. There was about 30 or so flats in the block so noise/dust/rubbish/time etc, was a real issue.

The tilers(?) left the original tiles which went about half way (they were sound) in place. They then bonded and occasionally screwed thin ply on the top part to level the walls. The walls were previously painted and I presume they used tile adhesive or gripfill etc, to fix. To level the ply they used a length of 4x2.

This was very quick and clean and they used tile on tile the very next day.

I must say I haven't done this myself so welcome other comments as to whether it was a cock up or sound method. However, the finished job looks good and I presume they must be happy to offer some kind of warranty, as they did all the flats the same way.

 

[keyplayer]

You could buy economy tiles of same thickness as originals and fill the gap with them, effectively tiling that area twice. I've seen kitchen fitters use this method, assuming the untiled portion of wall is sound.

 

[Thermo]

depending how big the area is and how much of a budget you have you can plug and screw wbp plywood to the wall to cover it entirely and then tile over it.

thermo

 

[RKB]

Excellent ideas, thank you very much.