Fixing a Loose Ceramic Tile Towel Rack End

[catccc]

We have ceramic tiles on our bathroom walls, and a couple of those tiles are integrated towel rack ends.  I'm not sure exactly what they are called, I hope I am describing them sufficiently.

I can see that the grout is cracking and coming loose around both rack-end tiles.  I can press the rack to the wall and the cracks close a bit.  I've stopped hanging towels on it and put a sign on it that indicates that nobody is allowed to touch it.  (It is coming loose because we have a little resident that thinks everything in the world is something on which to attempt to hang.)

It probably would continue to hold towels just fine, I don't want to risk the thing crashing to the floor, since my younger kid has a hard time remembering to lay off the thing.

Is there any way to repair this, or do I need to take the whole thing off in a controlled manner and re-affix with tile mortar (or whatever one uses to stick tiles to things)?

[Spork]

[ Not a pro, but have done a few DIY tile jobs. ]

You want to decide just how bad this is and if it's bad enough that you want to tear it up to make it better.

That towel-rack-tile is cemented to either dry wall (not very sturdy) or cement backer board.  If it is drywall, you're probably going to tear up the drywall it's cemented to taking it off.  If it is backer board, you're probably going to have to break up the towel-rack-tile to get it off.

Before you do either... you will want to carefully remove the grout around those tiles.  You can get an inexpensive grout saw and just saw it out by hand.  This will keep the destruction more localized -- so that it doesn't propagate along the tile.

 

[catccc]

Thanks for the tips.  I can't really tell how bad it is.  It's certainly not hanging by a thread, and honestly, it's possible that it's always been a little loose and I'm just noticing the cracks now.