I‘m in the process of re-tiling my bathroom and when I took the old tiles off some of the old grout stayed on the walls or in some areas messed up the dry wall surface. I‘m looking for recommendations of how to either remove the old grout from the wall, or how to smooth the surface over the area in order to lay the new tiles. Suggestions?
particular, provide the wall a sturdy scrape, get rid of any loose or flaky paint, then coat the wall with a sealant, dont be attentive to what it may be caled the place you reside, yet in britain we cal it unibond, in simple terms clarify interior the ironmongery shop, they could have the potential to help out.
You need to purchase some grout remover, you can find this at any place that sells tile. Then you need to get a container of drywall patch and spread it on with a puddy knife, then re- sand.
Just get a trowel or a razor scraper to remove the grout it works quite nicely. As for the messed up areas in the drywall surface just fill it up with tile adhesive with a trowel making it as even as you can prior to tiling.
The other posters offered good solutions for removing the grout, but I wanted to also add that you mentioned the drywall was messed up a bit. If you have found that there was just plain drywall behind the tiles, now is the time to replace that with green board for the main bathroom walls and use cement board in the shower/tub area. These are specifically made to withstand the direct water and high moisture content that occurs in a bathroom. Good luck!
If a putty knife or even rough sandpaper wont knock it off. It's really not a big deal to knock out the old sheetrock and install new. Just cut your old sheetrock about an inch from where your new tiles will stop, bust out everything in the tiling field, and screw in a new piece. This is easy to do because you dont have to worry about texture or tape and bedding, it's going to be covered by tile. Just make sure you replace the sheetrock with the exact same thickness. It's not as hard as you think.
