Tile over existing tiles?

[Surefire]

Hello all

I'm about to embark on a project of refurbishing my bathroom. Of course the other half wants new tiles fitting around the bath and like many a little lady, she obviously thinks that they just magically appear on the wall!

My problem is that being a reletively new house the existing tiles are fixed to plasterboard which is in turn fixed to the breeze block wall using the glue method (dob and dab I think it's called). Now I know that if I attempt to remove the tiles, most of the plasterboard will come off with with them leaving me a right mess and a bigish repair job. My other option is to tile over the existing tiles but this kind of goes against my gut feelings of not doing a proper job. For a start the new tiles will stick out a fair bit and may look odd. Is the adhesive reqired for such a job any good i.e. will the tiles fall off at some future date. Also because one end of the bath forms a shower area, will water ingress be an issue. How do you make a nice finish on the top of the tiles? is quadrant beading recommended or can one rely on grout or tile cement making a reasonable finish? These are just a few questions off the top of my head and I'm sure I'll have many more, but if anyone has any advice or opinions I would be very grateful.

 

[gcol]

Tiling onto tiles is fine so long as the existing tiles are sound. Give them a good washing down with sugar soap before you tile. You'll need to leave the adhesive to set for about 3 days before grouting though.
Regarding the edge finishing. If you have tile trim then there's no reason you can't reproduce what you have now and fill in the space left with grout.

 

[Moz]

water ingress
yes that could be a big issue ,
that part of the bath area are the tiles secure ?
is their a build up of discolouration in the grout ?
if yes to any of this I would strip back an repace plasterboard with WBP or tile backer board , if done right you can just reline this area an still tile over the tiled area ...

personally you want a top class finish , I would reline the lot IMHO

hope this helps

 

[Surefire]

Thanks for that chaps. The tiles are well stuck so that shouldn't be an issue. I'll let you know how it's gone when I make up my mind what to do.

 

[gcol]

You should try to stagger the joints too. So that the new grout lines are not directly over the old ones.

 

[Zampa]

You should try to stagger the joints too. So that the new grout lines are not directly over the old ones.

Interesting...why's that?

 

[Moz]

Zampa

you stagger the joints to give the tile surface better strength /adhersion

 

[Zampa]

Would there be a risk of tiles coming off then if you didnt stagger the joints?...reason I ask is because you do the same when wallpapering over lining paper.

 

[Moz]

Zampa
coming off ... yes a very big risk , as tiles are bigger an heavier now than the old small square tiles