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We recently replaced some old, cracking shower walls in a bathtub area with tile. Looks great. However, on one wall the drywall next to the tile bows out so it's not even with the tile in the middle section of the wall. That drywall edge also was damaged a bit as it was cut for placing the tile.

As you can see in the photo below the drywall sticks out about 1/4" - 1/2" on this part of the wall. There's only about 2 feet where it sticks out, the rest is even with the tile and looks nice. At minimum, the drywall needs to be fixed, but I'm a little worried about it getting damaged in the future.

What's the best way to fix and/or hide this? Our tile guy suggested running some sort of flexible molding the entire length of the transition to hide the gap.

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The tile extends out past where the water will likely splash, so there won't be a lot of direct water on the transition but certainly humidity and some wetness, so I want to avoid further damage to the drywall.

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  • Also, the tile extends out past where the water will likely splash, so there won't be a lot of direct water on the transition but certainly humidity and some wetness, so I want to avoid further damage to the drywall. – Voodoo Aug 2 '12 at 19:04
  • I edited your comment into the question, so you can remove the comment if you'd like. – Tester101 Aug 2 '12 at 19:34
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It looks like all that is seperating the drywall from the tile is a bead of caulking. To fix this, I would first remove all of the existing caulking. Then I would cut out the area of the affected drywall and patch in a new piece, using the factory taped edge as the end that butts up against the tile. Tape, mud and sand the new section and paint to match. Once finished, install a new bead of caulking along the entire length and it should look like new!

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    Also, if the area in question is fairly small, remove it and mud in a repair with setting type joint compound, not regular mud. Might take a couple of coats of compound, but he could feather it in, sand, seal it with primer and finish. – shirlock homes Aug 3 '12 at 12:14
  • That same problem is likely to develop the whole height of that joint. So whatever you do to fix it, do it from floor to ceiling. – alx9r Aug 4 '12 at 17:24
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    Wouldn't a piece of finishing and edge protection profile like schluter-jolly be better than just drywall and mud? It alleviates the factory edge requirement for the patch and makes that vertical vertex less vulnerable to damage from impact. – alx9r Aug 4 '12 at 17:28
  • Thanks for the ideas. Redoing the area with a new piece of drywall makes sense. I don't have any extra drywall so buying a whole piece for this little area seems like a bit of a pain, but so it goes. Haven't heard of this finishing protection before -- it this something you put on as part of redoing the drywall piece? – Voodoo Aug 6 '12 at 8:07
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    Go to your local reno store - they often have scrap pieces of drywall that you can take for free – Steven Aug 6 '12 at 13:58

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