Just realized my tile guy was right about the waterproofing

I was doing a small bathroom in my old house in Tacoma last fall and decided to save money by skipping the waterproof membrane behind the shower tile. My contractor kept saying it was a bad idea, but I thought the cement board would be enough. Three months later, I noticed a soft spot on the wall in the hallway next to the bathroom. Pulled off the tile and found black mold growing on the studs. It cost me an extra $1,200 to tear it all out, treat the mold, and redo it properly with a Schluter system. Anyone else had a waterproofing fail that taught them a lesson the hard way?

4 comments

4 Comments

lily_cooper3mo ago

Totally feel your pain. That soft spot in the hallway is the worst kind of warning sign. It's crazy how water just finds a way, like a tiny drip traveling down a stud into a totally different room. My uncle had the same thing happen, and the mold remediation bill was more than the original tile job. It really makes you respect the science of those waterproofing layers.

phoenix_singh253mo ago

Your uncle's mold bill being bigger than the tile job is wild. Did they have to tear out the drywall in multiple rooms to fix it all?

maxl933mo ago

That story hits home. My neighbor had a leak from a bad toilet seal that went under the vinyl floor. It rotted the subfloor all the way to the kitchen wall before they caught it. The floor just felt spongy one day. They had to replace a huge section of floor and the bottom plate of the wall. All from one tiny, slow leak.

brooket435d ago

Oh man, this hits so close to home for me. I did the exact same thing in my first house a few years back, thought I was being smart skipping the membrane because the cement board said "water resistant" right on the label. Six months later I was ripping out a whole shower that had turned into a science experiment back there, studs were all soft and crumbly like wet cardboard. My wife still gives me crap about it whenever we pass a hardware store. The worst part was the drywall on the opposite side of the wall had this weird bubbly paint that I thought was just bad work from the previous owner. Nope, it was moisture wicking all the way through the insulation and making the whole sheetrock sweat from behind. Cost me about double what it would have been if I just listened to my tile guy in the first place. Lesson learned hard.