Filling holes in bathroom tiles

[Jimk]

Reinforced by tiles? Slim chance shurely?

Doubtful, push the old through & out the inner side as belt & braces?

[Jimk]

If the holes will be covered by the new handle mounts then fill em with whatever? If not white silicone?

You should be able to push the rawlplugs through further into the plasterboard, suitable drill bit & small hammer?

[Tim Streater]

I'm replacing some grab handles around the bath, as they were coated steel; the coating hasn't lasted that long so at the ends of the handles, and around the holes, rust is appearing. The concept is to replace these with all-plastic handles of the same length but, inevitably, the holes don't align. quite close, but nowhere close enough to bodge it.

I imagine that the real answer is to replace the tiles and then fit the new handles in the same way the old were, but as the intention is to redo the whole room at some point, doing a perfect job now seems a waste. I'll just put the new handles in different places.

So: (1) with what and how would folks fill the old holes, and, (2) on the stud wall where the bath tiles are on plasterboard, how do I remove the expanding plugs put in the holes - or do I even need to?

[John Rumm]

Unless you want to get creative hand tinting some white two part filler, and then lacquering over, silicone...

I ended up with a couple of screw holes that were left showing when doing this shower valve refit. Used silicone in the end, and while not by any means an invisible repair, it turned out not too objectionable:

Stick a screw partly into the plug and tap the end with a hammer - that will set the plug deeper in the wall. Then undo the screw and fill. No need to actually remove the plug.

[Harry Bloomfield, Esq.]

Tim Streater brought next idea :

If you can push the plugs well below the surface, do that, otherwise try to pull them out with a screw barely screwed in, or use a drill to drill them out. Fill the holes with silicon bathroom sealant, tile cement or similar. That is what I did a decade ago, when I fitted a different replacement shower which left holes on show. White tiles/ white sealant, so they only show if you are looking for them.

[Martin Brown]

Can you not position the new grabs so that they obscure most of the unwanted screw holes?

Silicone is what I would use for a quick and dirty solution.

Epoxy loaded with alumina and suitable pigment if I was inclined to want it to be an almost invisible mend. You will have to practice to get an exact colour match as there are zillions of shades of not quite white.

[Chris Hogg]

An alternative to filling the holes might be to use chrome mirror-screw caps, something like these,

and not try to hide them.

[Dave Liquorice]

Something waterproof to stop water seeping behind the tiles. Probably silicone.

What sort of expanding plugs? Plastic ones that might just push in and drop down the void? Or the metal anchors that forma cone and spread the load on the back of the plaster board?

[Robin]

On 24/04/2020 00:56, John Rumm wrote: <snip>

Assuming the plugs are below the back surface of the tile? That ought to be a safe assumption so the expansion of the plug cannot crack the tile. But it occurred to me that these might be fittings that Tim had inherited from someone who hadn't and had got away with it.

[John Rumm]

It probably does not make that much difference - oddly hammering a screw into a (plastic) plug tends to move the plug much better than one might expect[1], without expanding it much. The only likely problem if the hole was not drilled deeper than the plug in the first place...

[1] I remember years ago when someone suggested to me that you could drive a plug into a hole with a screw far more effectively than by trying to tap it in with a hammer, I was sceptical since intuition suggested you would simply drive the fixing into the plug.

Might be an issue with very thin wall tiles I suppose.

[David]

Grout seems the obvious answer - it should be all round the edges of each tile anyway.

Cheers

Dave R

[Roger Hayter]

I've seen a really strong 8mm porcelain tile split driving an old-fashioned plain shank wood screw into a plastic plug that was rather too small. So you can get immense forces. I'm sure you're right that the risk is low with modern parallel threaded screws but I was always taught it was good practice to put the plugs below the tiles. Exception perhaps for very light objects, with small, short screws.

[John Rumm]

Yup, below the tile is definitely best practice - even more so with old tapered screws.

[John]

I would be worried about the safety of a grab handle fixed to where there are some redundant holes. The wall is already weak.

[Tim Streater]

The new handle's furthest-apart holes are about 2cm further apart than the old one. I could probably cover all the old holes with the new handle, but I worry that some of the new holes would be very close to the old ones, and this might cause two issues:

1) a weakened wall

2) new plugs in the new holes may not be able to do their thing correctly behind the plasterboard because of the old plugs being in the way.

So I prefer to relocate the new handles.

+1

[Tim Streater]

OK

Looks very good.

+1

[Tim Streater]

I *think* it was our local chap who put these handles up. Or he may have done one and I added one, can't remember. But the plugs go through the tiles and plasterboard and when tightened spread out behind the latter.

[Tim Streater]

Sounds good to me - thanks.

[Tim Streater]

The latter.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Tim: What may work very well for this and look very good against white tiles is white Milliput - its a loaded epoxy intended for china repairs. If you rub it down carefully with fine wet and dry after it sets it should look pretty invisible