Water – Tile making clicking noise when stepped on and grout flaking away

ceramic-tiletilewater-damage

I bought a house built in 1993 a few years ago. When we first moved in the tile seemed fine, recently two of the tiles right outside the shower have started making a clicking noise when stepped on and the grout has started to flake away around them.

Ideally I'd like to know if the underlayment got water damaged and is bulging or it was just a bad thinset job. One of the tiles that I can see the edge of is stamped July 2007 so I'm guessing the bathroom got remodeled around then. Whats the best approach? Re grout and ignore it? try to pull up a tile? if so how? use caulk instead?

We plan on remodeling this bathroom in ~5 years which is a while off, but we don't care too much about the look of this particular tile until then because it's covered in a bath mat most of the time. Here is a bunch of pictures and a video.

Best Answer

I have made successful "temporary kludge fixes" of problematic loose tiles by removing them, cleaning, and installing them with polyurethane construction adhesive. Some have lasted for years. It's a kludge, but it may work without getting into complete redo if you'd rather not do that now.

Keep the adhesive underneath and regrout around them.