The liner on the showerhead wall is peeled back. You were warned. Surprisingly, the wood feels sound, although highly discolored.

The pre-slope is removed, exposing the plywood subfloor.

Ten bags and 5 hours.

Buy stock in this company. Tore a hole or two, but never spilled a speck. They're over a buck a bag and I'd pay three times that for the time they save.

Schluter school tomorrow morning at 7:30 a.m. at my local tile store.

When anyone asks why I hang out on this forum, the shower you are working on is the reason.

Better your nose than mine, Joe!

C'mon Mongo, I want more than that please. Should I keep the walls with the RedGuard and cement board or am I nuts for not demoing the whole thing? The poor homeowner has paid 12K for this thing; I'm trying to keep her costs down.

Until Joe and a few other tile pros who hang around here finally clone themselves, thus eliminating the many awful installers in the industry, stories like this make me glad we decided on a solid surface showerbase. Tile is beautiful but a bad install is an expensive repair waiting to happen.

Reminds me of the time I kept having problems with my new DW, until finally the third repairman who came actually knew what he was doing. "Your detergent/rinse unit was wired backwards," he told us. Thank goodness appliances have a warranty!

If we could only be so lucky to have them on plumbing and electrical, LOL!

Many thanks for the educational photos. Ugh, I can just imagine the smells......

Jakkom -- ditto!!!! We're going with a cast iron Kohler base. Terrified to tile it.

"C'mon Mongo, I want more than that please. Should I keep the walls with
the RedGuard and cement board or am I nuts for not demoing the whole
thing?"

Sorry about that, I didn't know you were looking for feedback.

When I see a failure like that I prefer to demo everything and start anew. It does depend on the reason for failure though. For crappy work, I prefer to demo. If the leak is a result of some other fault, then I can see merit in making a partial repair.

Your wall studs look okay once you get above the pan, so in your judgement if the walls are fine you can probably save them.

The photo of the northern wall with the tile popped of shows what appear to be uncompressed thinset ridges. If the tiles popped off easily, that might be cause for concern.

However, if I know going in that I'm going to try to save the wall tile, I'll try to avoid cutting the existing tile backer board right along the bottom edge of a course of wall tile. If the backer gets demo'd right to a grout line and new backer gets filled in to that spot, there will be a grout line right over a seam in the backer board. The grout on that line may be more prone to cracking.

What a mess. Good luck with it!

You should be a comedian on the side Joe! Though this is everyone's nightmare! We just had our shower installed using a schulter system. Fingers crossed!! Waiting on the glass to be installed.

What issues were they having to indicate a problem?

"What issues were they having to indicate a problem?"

Ponding water. Stink. Cracked tile. No returned phone calls from original contractor.

Hi Joe! When was the original tile job done?

A couple years ago.

"No returned phone calls from original contractor"

same thing happened to us!!

interesting.

I just spoke to the original contractor. He claims he tried to arrange a do-over and the homeowner wouldn't let him back in. She has told me she didn't want him back, so his story makes sense.