These walls are susceptible to water damage if the tile s grout joints develop gaps.
How to rrepair broken tile shower wall.
Use a sharp razor knife to scrape off any old dried caulk and soap residue from the top edge of the bath or shower base.
Cosmetically repair hairline crack in shower tile.
If a tile is set correctly it will pull off the waterproofing on the backer board.
However that doesn t make a hairline crack any.
In modern construction shower tile is generally installed with a moisture barrier under a base of waterproof cement board so water damage is somewhat less likely.
Showers are built today with waterproof membranes behind the tiles and the grout between tiles isn t necessarily 100 waterproof anyway.
Ceramic shower tiles may be damaged or broken over a period of years.
Cracked bathroom tiles can be caused by either an instability in the surface under the tile or in rare cases the low quality of the tile itself.
If this happens then there will be nothing to attach the new tile to.
You can repair the crack with tile filler and then paint over the filler with a color that matches the rest of the tile.
To fix the crack you have a couple of options.
One thing to be aware of is that a hairline crack in shower tile is mainly a cosmetic issue.
Use a hammer and bust up the tile.
Then remove the rest of the tile with a hammer and chisel.
You can replace the entire tile.
In this example the tile was set over wedi backer boards.
In older homes ceramic shower tile was often installed directly over drywall.
Which made removing and resetting the tile easy.
Sometimes the broken tiles are securly attached to the shower walls and the shower tile will not come out without also removing a piece of the underlying shower wall.
This may include damage to the grout joints or even individual tiles may crack causing water to leak into the walls or floor space where it can damage subfloors or lower level spaces.