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I am about to do a shower and I have the bathroom gutted out to studs I am watching youtube vidoes by The TileCoach who shows how to float walls in order to have plumb and swquare surfaces for your tiles.

Why can't you set your backboards plumb and square using shimming or something else instead of floating walls when installing tiles?

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    Not everything you see online is the best way to do things. Some are downright hoaxes.
    – Ed Beal
    Aug 10, 2020 at 13:55
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    That's the method he feels most comfortable with. It may also be that he's fitting tile to existing walls and doesn't have the luxury of shimming the wallboard.
    – isherwood
    Aug 10, 2020 at 13:58
  • Trying to get an existing wall squared up would be a reason. I was looking at this as a new install because the bath was gutted.
    – Ed Beal
    Aug 10, 2020 at 14:04

2 Answers 2

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You can shim backer board.

Depending on the tile size and how it meets with a seam I will mesh tape and float my seams to reduce cracking.

If a tile seam ends up close to a backer seam. This is where I float a wall not to try and square things up.

A vertical surface being filled with mortar to square it up just sounds nuts to me.

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  • To be clear, you can shim 1/2" backer board. In case someone has overlaid 1/4", that won't carry between studs.
    – isherwood
    Aug 10, 2020 at 14:00
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    Good note on tile seams close to backer seams +1
    – JACK
    Aug 10, 2020 at 17:02
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Done a lot of bathrooms... Years of failure and extra work produced an easily repeatable lesson that saves time (money). SQUARE YOUR SHOWER FRAMING. Yes it may be a PITA but take an hour to square your shower as perfect as possible and everything else is much easier.

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    Even with old construction...+1
    – JACK
    Aug 10, 2020 at 17:00

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