Shower door installation in Southeast Michigan

Shower door installation is a job where being close to plumb is not good enough. A door set even slightly out of true drags on the track, leaks at the bottom corner and puts water on the bathroom floor every time somebody showers. Our bathroom repair crew fits kit style doors and enclosures, set square to the opening and sealed so the water stays in the shower.

Framed, semi frameless, and what the difference buys

A framed door has metal around the whole panel. It is the most forgiving of an opening that is out of square, the least expensive, and the easiest to seal. The frame does collect soap and water along its bottom edge, which is the main complaint people have about it.

Semi frameless keeps the frame on the fixed panel and loses it on the door itself, which reads far lighter without demanding a perfect opening. It is the middle option and it is where most households land once they have seen all three in person.

Where frameless glass stops being a repair job

Fully frameless enclosures use heavy tempered glass carried on hinges bolted through the panel, and they are measured, templated and fabricated for one specific opening. They are not a kit and they cannot be adjusted on site. They also demand a level curb and plumb walls, which older bathrooms rarely offer.

We do not fabricate frameless glass, and we refer that work rather than attempting it. What we will do is measure your opening and say whether it is square enough for one to be worth pricing, which is a useful answer to have before you start getting quotes.

Measuring the opening that is not square

Almost every bathroom we work in has walls out of plumb by a noticeable margin over the height of a shower. Kit doors accommodate a certain amount of that in the wall channels, and beyond that range they will not seal.

We measure width at the sill, the middle and the top, and check both walls for plumb before ordering anything. That takes ten minutes and it is why our doors do not arrive and then need sending back. A homeowner measuring once across the middle is the usual reason a door will not fit.

Drilling tile, and the crack you cannot undo

Every door needs holes through the tile for the wall channels, and porcelain in particular punishes a hurried hole. It needs the right bit, low speed and water on the tip. A cracked tile in a finished shower is an expensive repair and there is no way to hide it.

Each penetration is also a hole in the waterproofing, so every anchor gets sealed as it goes in. Skipping that step puts water behind the tile through the very fixings meant to keep it out.

Sealing the bottom without sealing the drainage

The sill is where doors leak, and the rule that matters is that silicone goes on the outside of the track rather than the inside. Sealing both sides traps water inside the channel with nowhere to go, and it works its way out at the ends onto the floor.

The vinyl sweep along the bottom of the door is the other half of it. Sweeps are consumable, they harden and tear, and replacing one is a five minute job that fixes most doors that have started leaking. That is worth trying before anybody buys a new enclosure.

What the installation covers

• Opening measured at three heights and both walls checked for plumb
• Old door or curtain rod removed, with existing holes filled and sealed
• Wall channels and header set plumb, anchored and sealed at every penetration
• Door hung, swing or slide adjusted, and the sweep fitted to the sill
• Sill sealed on the outside of the track, with the inside left free to drain

Doors, curtains and who is using the shower

A glass door is better looking and much easier to keep clean than a curtain. It is also a barrier, and for somebody who needs help getting into the shower, or who uses a bath seat, that barrier is the problem rather than the solution. A sliding door on a tub cuts the opening in half.

In a bathroom somebody is struggling in, a curtain and a handheld shower beat a door most of the time. We say so rather than selling the more expensive option, and if the room is being set up for somebody’s return home, the bathroom safety visit covers the whole picture.

Hard water, and the glass that never looks clean

Shower glass across much of Southeast Michigan clouds within a couple of years, and the cause is mineral deposit etching into the surface rather than soap film sitting on it. Once the glass is etched, no cleaner reverses it.

Factory applied protective coatings delay it considerably and are worth specifying when you buy. A squeegee kept in the shower does more than any product, and it only works if somebody actually uses it.

Tub doors, and the tradeoff nobody mentions in the showroom

Putting sliding glass on a tub solves a real problem, because a curtain over a tub always leaks somewhere. What it costs you is the bath. Climbing over a tub wall is awkward enough without a track on top of it and a fixed panel taking half the opening, and bathing a small child through a two foot gap is harder than it sounds.

In a household with young children, a good curtain and a weighted liner is the better answer and costs a fraction as much, and it sits alongside the rest of the childproofing work in a bathroom small people use. In a primary bathroom used only for showers, the door is clearly right. It is worth deciding on how the tub is actually used rather than on how it looks.

Tempered glass, and what happens when it breaks

Shower glass is tempered by code, which means that when it does fail it collapses into small blunt pieces rather than shards. That is a considerable safety improvement and it does surprise people, because a tempered panel can sit fine for years and then break from an edge chip nobody noticed.

Edges are the vulnerable part. A door that has been slammed into a wall repeatedly, or one whose bottom edge catches the track, is working on a chip. If you can feel a nick along an edge with a fingernail, that panel is worth replacing before it decides on its own timing.

Fitting the door after the walls are done

A door goes on last, after the tile or the surround is finished and cured. If the walls are also due, sequencing the two into one project saves a visit and means the opening is measured against the finished surface rather than the old one. A surround replacement or a tile shower rebuild both change the opening dimensions, sometimes by enough to matter.

Where we work across Southeast Michigan

We fit doors across Washtenaw, Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Livingston and Monroe counties from Platt Road in Ypsilanti, including Ann Arbor, Canton and Plymouth. If you want a look at what a finished enclosure can be, our shower door page covers the renovation side of this work.

Get the door hung

Measure the opening at the sill and at the top and send us both numbers. If they differ by much, that tells us most of what we need to know. View our Portfolio to see the showers our crews build, or contact us now for a free quote.