We gutted our bathroom last year and were incorrectly told by a contractor that we could tile over the green drywall for our tub surround. Lucky we found out this was a bad idea BEFORE we tiled. Instead we put up Barker tile
formatting link
Now, a year later, I HATE the stuff. I tiled a small sink backsplash yesterday and it looks SUPER and I'd like to do the same tile for our tub surround. Here's the problem, ripping out all the drywall in the bathroom and redoing the entire thing again with cement backer board is NOT an option. I have 2 ideas and I'd like to know if either will work. If they are both bad ideas, then we'll suck it up and suffer with the Barker tile until we can redo the bathroom again. My ideas are:
- rip off the Barker tile and cut out the drywall in the tub surround area (basically chop out a 5 foot high section around the tub). Then replace the chopped out sections with cement backer board (or whatever surface is suitable for tiling). Main problem with this is, not sure how I'll connect the cement board to the drywall around the edges.
- tile over the Barker tile. Now I hadn't even thought this an option until I read yesterday that you could tile over a laminated countertop. This got me thinking that maybe I can just tile right over that Barker tile which is waterproof so would provide a waterproof surface for the tile. Problem is, this stuff is shiny so maybe the tiles will just slide right off? If I scuff it up, I'll most likely remove the waterproof coating and defeat the purpose of tiling right over. My other thought was, maybe the tiles will be too heavy and eventually pull the Barker tile right off the wall? Any opinions on either of these crazy idea would be great. Other options are also welcome.