Hi

My drywall contractor installed densshield around my tub surround. I am going to be installing various sizes of porcelain tile in the next week. My question is the following: the drywall contractor used regular drywall mud on the denshield seams and even textured some of the area that I will be tiling. Also, my paint contractor painted some of the area that has the texture on it. I am wondering if I need to sand it down and prep it differently before I apply the thinset? Any help would be appreciated.

I would probably determine where the tile would run and use a damp sponge to remove any texture/drywall compound, and sand any areas that are painted.

Are the joints/seams in the denshield sealed and is there a gap between the denshield and the tub that can be (or is) filled with silicon?

to finish Dens correctly, all panel seams and fastener heads need to be water proofed with redgard, hydroban, or aquadefense. You might as well just paint the liquid water proofing over any exposed drywall mud at the same time.

Thanks for the responses. There are seams and fastner heads around the whole surround. They have been filled with regular drywall compound. Sounds like I need to use one of the products mentioned above to waterproof it.

There is also a gap between the tub and the Dens. My tub has the standard one inch lip that is supposed to go behind the Dens. It does cover the lip on the 5' side of the tub, but on the short side of the tub the Dens just coms down to the lip of the tub. This is because the bathroom was framed 1/2" to big so tub doesn't touch the wall. So I am looking for suggestions on what to do. One though I had was to fill the gap with thinset and then run the wall tile down until it touches the tub. Any thoughts?

Thanks for your help!

You can do that, but thinset filled in too thick will most likely sag. If you can get it to work, you'll need to waterproof it as well.

Try using hardie board tape at this area to hold the thinset in place, make sure your thinset mix is thick and then as mentiond waterproof.