Replacing shower enclosure: do I need to retile?

amatos

Hi,

I want to replace the shower enclosure and tray in one of my bathrooms. It wasn't properly installed by the previous owner and I want to change it from a quadrant to a square shape anyway. Do I need to re-tile the part around the shower enclosure if I do that?

My bathroom tiles have unfortunately been discontinued. I do have a few spares plus the product code but I don't think I can buy the same tiles for the enclosure. I've also been told I can't remove the old tiles and re-use them. Is that true?

Thanks!

Aylesbury_Duck

I think it needs re-tiling because the new tray goes in first and the new tiles are laid on top of the tray. You'd be extremely lucky to be able to find a tray that exactly matched the current width length and depth of the current one and to be able to remove the current tray from under the current tiles.

No, you can't re-use the old tiles. It's inevitable that some will break when removing them and getting the old grout off the back of them will be almost impossible.

jk0

If you can get old tiles off intact, you can put them in water for two days to loosen the glue, then scrape it off. (Get the grout off at the same time.)

amatos

Thanks, makes sense.

Chrishazle

If you want easier in the future, remove the tiles and replace them with shower panels - decent thick ply backed ones. We did this a few months ago, it's so much easier to clean down now, plus there's no grout to go discoloured, black and mouldy. Wife is delighted with them. I bought from rubberduck https://www.rubberduckbathrooms.co.uk/shower-panels-boards.

fezster

You could just re-tile the shower area using different tiles - eg. mosaic or mosaic-style tiles, rather than redo the whole bathroom.

JackeeBoy

Funny enough, I just done this. For the floor tiles, we had to cut round it to make it a bit bigger for the new tray. Grout was used to cover the gaps. For the wall tiles, lower half are just plain white tiles compared to the peach wall tiles. Does not look out of place and more like a feature well.

Jens27

I want to replace my shower screens in my walk in shower but don’t want to change the tray as the floor is tiled around it. Is it possible to replace from sizes only as I don’t have manufacturer info.

BUFF

Possibly, there is a lot of standardisation of sizes in the shower enclosure industry. If it's a curved/shaped screen it will be harder to find a match than for a square/rectangular one.

For future use - pictures are worth a 1000 words