The explanation

 Some time ago, not very long, maybe a week, "no-one" noticed the tiles around her bath/shower combo were bowing out away from the wall. 

She notified the landlord, who conveniently lives right next door and he hustled around to have a look. Right away he phoned one of his old friends who does this kind of repair work and the friend arrived the next day and together he and the landlord began removing the tiles.

It was a weekend, so "no-one" was home. Behind the tiles they discovered a very wet wall and eventually a broken pipe was revealed as the cause of the leakage which had apparently been going on for some time. This was repaired and a large sheet of plastic hung so that "no-one" could still shower.

Once the wall dried out, the two men got to work and the dried wall was painted with a waterproof layer, which had to be left overnight to dry. the next day being Monday, of course "no-one" had to be at work. This is where I stepped in, catching an early bus to the city, then another bus to "no-one's" home so I could let the tiler in to begin recovering the wall.

here is the wall with some of the new white tiles in place over the dark blue waterproof layer, 

and the completed wall. The orange markers are holding the tile spacers in place while the tile adhesive dries.

At this point I came home and prepared to return the next day, Tuesday, when the grout would be applied and then the silicon seal at the edges of the bathtub.

That should have been the end of it. 

But (there's always a but), the tiler had forgotten to replace the shower curtain rail before  placing the silicon sealant. He would need to drill holes for the screws which would rain dust down onto the sealant and it wouldn't dry properly. 

Now we were looking at a third day away from home for me. 

I got there early this morning and waited for the tiler to arrive. Measuring  and drilling for the screws to re-attach the curtain rail didn't take long though the drill was noisy. Once that was done, the tiler packed up and left while the landlord hung around with a bucket of paint and touched up a few chips in the wall.

A chipped patch at the left of the tiles there.

and here is the completed job. Looks really nice doesn't it?