You can't remove your bathroom walls made with wire mesh, plaster and tile? This DIY video has bathroom wall demolition tips for this. Plaster wall removal is very brutal, and you just have to go old school to demolish walls and remove plaster. Wall demo is not so easy with 2" of tile walls over plaster and lath. Tearing down a tile wall in a house is simple if it is drywall, but plaster and lath and wire mesh walls add a level of difficulty that requires you to go old school, to remove plaster walls, using a combination of large demo bars, small wire cutters for surgery, and big hammers.

Tools used in this wire lath wall demo project:
RYOBI AG4031G 4-1/2" 5.5-Amp Angle Grinder https://amzn.to/2BNYYjr
Ridgid 4" Dry/Wet Continuous Rim Diamond Blade for lath walls https://amzn.to/2SqFSXN
DEWALT DW4774 4-1/2-Inch Double-Row Diamond-Cup Grinding-Wheel for tile floor https://amzn.to/2BMzm6E

Here we show you how to remove the seemingly unmovable 2" thick wire mesh lathe, plaster walls and cement slab tile walls you sometimes find in older houses, when you try to remove wall tile. It can be a real pain to demo wire lathe walls, but we make it easy for you. Forget trying to smash the thick wall with large heavy sledgehammers and waste your time and kick up dust everywhere and the bathroom tile wall does not budge anyway. Your plaster and lath wall demolition strategy needs a boost.

First, look how they build the wire lath and plaster walls. Builders get a roil of wire mesh, and unroll it like chicken wire, and nail it to the studs. Then they apply layers of mortar, then the plaster. If it is a tiled kitchen wall or a tiled bathroom wall, they about another inch of mortar and tiles on top of the plaster walls. This understanding helps your wall removal efforts.

How to demolish walls in the bathroom and tile walls

For demolishing and removing bathroom walls in a house, forget the sledgehammer, it won't demolish plaster and lath walls with tile remove the wall. It's a real pain to remove wall tile from these thick plastered walls.

Now let's show you how to remove tile walls with wire mesh and plaster:

Instead focus on removing the wire mesh walls by peeling the plaster wall with the mesh still intact away from the studs, so we we locate the edge of the sheet of wire lath buried in the wall, and peel and pry back the wire lath where it was nailed to the studs. When we remove wall tile we try to cut around it and peel it off in sheets, rather than trying to remove wall tile by hammering the tiles off or chiseling.

wall demolition tips

When we demolish walls, we know how to remove bathroom walls and how to remove wire lath. To demolish the bathroom tile wall and the kitchen tiled wall, we find the edge of the wire mesh, knowing it is nailed to the studs, it is easier to loosen the wall in huge chunks off the stud wall by prying it away from the studs at the nails.

How to remove bathroom walls with our wall demolition tips

By scoring a fault line down the thick bathroom tile wall with an angle grinder first, this makes the slab flexible enough that when you start to peel the wire mesh lath away from the studs the cement and wall comes with it. This can be accomplished in large whole sections of the wall being removed intact, no wall demolition with hammers. There is no such thing as the perfect wall demolition hammer. The angle grinder makes wall demolition fun.

A quick recap on how to remove wire mesh under tile is to find the left or right side of where it ends, and make some holes in the plaster and lath wall, and get behind the wire lath with your demo bar and pry the wire mesh off the stud walls.

how to remove tile walls

As you perform your wall demolition, remember Reagan's famous words to motivate you: "Tear down this wall!" Wall demolition is tough work, and make sure you wear a mask and eye protection.

Congratulations, you now know how to demolish and remove old wire mesh plaster bathroom walls. If you liked our wire lath and plaster wall demolition tips, click the thumbs up icon, and remember to subscribe. Now you can show your friends how to remove bathroom walls with plaster and lath.
00:00 Introduction: Old Bathroom wall of tiles 2" thick, wire mesh
02:50 Remove all bathtub hardware
03:22 Start scoring lines into the 2" thick tiles and mesh mortar
04:40 Getting behind wire mesh with pry bar
06:24 Use aviation snips to cut through exposed wire mesh
07:53 Hoe to pry off large sections of wire mesh and tile
09:20 Hammer plaster & Drywall around tile border to get behind it
14:25 More hammering holes into walls to pry out wire lathe
16:17 Grind through the wire mesh from the back side