New tiles over old on shower floor?

4 years ago

I am in the process of renovating a bathroom, with hex mosaic tiles on the shower floor. The person doing the tiling just finished, and I noticed that there are two different tones of gray on the floor. The tile was from a reputable tile store and all supposedly from the same lot— in fact, the mosaic tile was all in one carton. Nevertheless, there seem to be two different shades and somehow (?!) the tile guy didn’t notice. Because it’s on the floor, it would be very complicated to take it out. The tile guy says he can’t do it without having to redo the whole shower pan, which he does not want to do. But I obviously do not want to live with the mismatched tiles. I’ve been doing a little research and it looks like the easiest way to deal with this might be to put a new floor over this one, using a drain extender. The “old” floor is level and in great shape — it’s brand new! So hopefully that makes this fairly straightforward? I’d appreciate any thoughts/suggestions. Thanks!

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Chrissy Anne

3 years ago

We added teak tiles which my husband cut to size. I know its an old post but for anyone facing this dilemma. Underneath is crappy old 1970 green mosaic. Its held up beautiful, drains well & nice on the feet

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Comments (7)

Nancy in Mich
4 years ago
last modified: 4 years ago
A shower floor cannot be level. It must slope in all directions toward the drain. As for the color problem, a tiling professional should lay out the tiles before spreading the mastic. If he had, he would have discovered the issue. One solution would have been to randomly pull single tiles out of the other sheets and replace most of the tiles on the odd sheets with those of the majority color. A careful homeowner might have checked the whole order and seen the problem, but it is the responsibility of the tiler to be ready before starting the job.
Fori
4 years ago
Wow that's quite a bad match. (I'm sure it's not LEVEL...you just mean nice and smooth.)

I don't know if it can be tiled over but I'm surprised that such a tidy tiler didn't notice! Love how the curb tile lines up...
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cat_ky
4 years ago
I dont know if it can be tiled over either, but, I would have a chat with your tile person. I think he is going to know the answer. He did a very nice job of tiling and matching everything up, so much nicer than a lot we see on here. He is obviously very good at what he does, so he will have the answers for you.
Rachel
Original Author
4 years ago
Thanks to all of you for your responses. And yes -- sorry for the confusion! I meant smooth (no broken tiles, etc.), not level! It of course slopes down to the drain. Here's a previous thread that includes a bunch of comments about the problems that would arise from trying to replace the floor, but also a mention of something called an EZdraincap that raises the level of the drain and makes it possible to lay the new floor on top of the existing floor: https://www.houzz.com/discussions/4515626/can-i-replace-tile-in-shower-floor-only-and-not-walls? That's what I'm hoping could be done. But my tiler has not suggested this (he seems to think I need to live with it) so I thought I'd do a bit of my own research and see if anyone has had experience with this process.
catbuilder
4 years ago
Where are the valve and the shower head located?

I wouldn't be happy with the slivers at the top.

It's possible that it just hasn't finished drying. You can see at least 4 different shades on the floor, with the lighter ones sprinkled throughout.
Rene Newen
3 years ago
Rachel, what did you end up doing with the shower floor? Did you have it tiled over? How did that work?