Home Depot is telling their customers at their “how to” that drywall backer board should not be used because the weight of the tile will remove the paper on the drywall and the tile will fall off and say that cement board should be used. LOL
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In my experiences, generally tile is usually fine on drywall- in areas where there is no moisture. An exception maybe really large tiles ie. 18x18 or 20x20, but I think still they would be fine. I have stuck plenty of 12x12 tiles to the wall. We usually use a premixed mastic from home depot, forget the brand name right now.
Cement backer board shoul always be used when tiling the walls around a tub/shower. Drywall should not be used here even the "moisture resistant" green board.
What Webby said -- drywall is generally fine in "dry" locations (eg, a normal kitchen backsplash, or dry areas in a bathroom), at least if mastic is used for the install. Some sort of cement board backer (*) (generally with thinset) should be used in wet areas (such as a shower surround).
(*) Of course you can always go the full monty and use wire lath and mud for a backer, but few people are that much into self-abuse.
Like others have already said, tile will stick just fine to drywall and not pull the paper off. If tiling onto existing DW in a kitchen especially, I usually wash the wall well and then prime with a good primer like BM Fresh Start. Then tile away.
Dry areas only.
Maybe HD's sales of HardiBacker, WonderBoard and other similar products are down........
OR more likely, the "HD Pro" running the demo messed up his script a bit.
Jim
I haven't heard that
I haven't heard that explanation
I have understood the backer is to reduce subsurface flexibility to prevent tile from cracking if pressure is applied and the surface flexes
Never heard that one. The main reason for using backer is because drywall turns to carp when it gets wet.