Over the past few years, the paint and dry wall above our shower has started to peal and develop some funk/mold. We are wanting to sell our house and build soon, and this is one of the items on my list of things to do in order to get our house ready to sell. I would like to fix the issue, and then put up a tile backsplash.

My buddy who is a builder in another part of town said he would replace the wallboard with duraroc and then tile it. Is this required? Another guy said he would most likely just peal the flaking pieces of wallboard, treat the mold spots, fill in any uneven spots with wall mud, seal it with something (forgot what he said), then tile it. Any input on this?

Could anyone provide fair ball park cost of what I would pay someone to do a job like this for me? My builder buddy ballparked me $350 about a year ago, but as I said, now hes too busy to tackle it, so I got another quote the other day from a random guy on facebook(the guy that said he wouldn't replace the wallboard) and it was $900... That just seems high for what I consider to be less quality work.

(note: I am in the memphis area, if anyone local wants to give me a real quote)

Depending on cost, and whether I need to replace the wallboard, I may try to tackle it myself... so any input on the process, etc... would be greatly appreciated.

Here is a link to an album of some pictures of the shower: https://photos.app.goo.gl/CWNWfHipVoStrYB89

Let me know if you cant see the pictures, and I can upload them straight to houzz in a post below.