How do I fix this wall

Hi, my brick wall has small cracks and bubble-up area. I'm planning to sand and fill it will crack filler. And then I need to re-paint.
Can I paint just that area if I find a matching color, or should I paint the whole wall? How many layers of paint should I apply? I haven't done any of these before, any advice is much appreciated.

 

That first photo is a dead ringer of the bedroom wall in my unit...which is a shared wall with bathroom which did have a water leak.

If there's a water leak its got to be fixed. Then sand and a couple coats. Matching paint is near impossible so you can hide the wall with some furniture. In my case, I just told the tenant to cover that part of the wall with a bed. All good.

 

Thanks for that. Yes it is bathroom behind the bubbles wall. So I need to get a plumber first then

 

I would turn all your taps off then go look at your water meter to see if its still spinning. That would indicate a large leak.

Then I would pull the bell housing off the taps in the shower and take off the shower arm/head to see if the washers are creating a leak down the wall.

If you still havent found a leak then its likely that the waterproofing is gone. Id try a quick fix of running silicon around all the joins or if the tiling looks real bad Id bite the bullet and rip out the tiles and re waterproof and tile.

 

May need to re-grout too. Have seen a similar issue at another property. Didn’t require a plumber thankfully.

 

Just curious, What was the cause of the issue at your property? How did you fix it?

 

The grout in the shower had just died over time so water was getting through. It was a case of taking out the old grout (very time consuming!), regrouting and use silicon around all the edges.

 

We had a similar issue in a 35yr old unit, is the shower located on that wall?

As I have time and limited $$ and our tiles were in good condition I did as above

1. Removed all old grout from shower Floor and wall, bought a tool from Bunnings and spent the day in there.

2. cleaned and re-grouted all the tiles

3. Added a neat bead of silicon along the floor and wall tile join and 100mm up the corner join.

4. Removed the shower head and replaced as it was ugly, new white tape to ensure no leak from there.

5. Removed the taps and replaced as they too where a nice brown plastic, father in law did the washers as well.

The Shower look so much better, that we the fixed the small bubbling paint and guess what, we sold the unit a year late and it hadn't come back by then so fingers crossed that was it. The grout had been scrubbed so many times it was worn away, instead of being level with the tile it was a sunken, so water used it as a drain, plus the waterproofing 30yrs ago would have broken down as well.