Never Leaving Well Enough Alone

Should we rip off more tiles in the Master Bathroom or not? That's the current dilemma. The putrid smell of the Jacuzzi tub seems to have crept into other areas of this room leading me to believe we have bigger problems than we thought.

Over the past few days the smell that I thought was initially caused by the Jacuzzi tub has come and gone. Some days more pungent and putrid than normal, I've partly tried to ignore the situation hoping it will go away and the other part of the time, I've been theorizing reasons for the smell.

On Sunday, I "Scuncied" (used a steamer known as a Scunci) to vaporize/kill with heat all of the bacteria and soap scum on the tiles in the bathroom. Kevin then came through in the last week and began scraping out the grouting between all of these tiles, so we can regrout and have a nice white bathroom again.

This is when he discovered a tile that "popped off" of the wall, much like the tiles in the shower had "popped off" for my Dad. Kevin found more rot and decay behind this wall tile near the shower stall. My overactive imagination began to picture mold, mildew, ants and every other slimey thing on the planet decaying behind the tiles we haven't torn off to clean and be replaced on fresh backerboard.

My latest half-cocked idea is to remove random tiles and "check behind them" for anything gross. But let's just keep this between you and me, I think my Dad would flip if he heard this one!