The recent conversation around the shower door community has been about warranties. Providing customers with information about which things are covered under a warranty and which things are not is obviously important. Some shops don’t bother to provide a written warranty, but many do. My tendency is to explain to my customers that hardware typically…
Whether you love social media or not, platforms like Facebook, Instagram and others are definitely here to stay. It’s true these sites can be time-wasters, but they can also provide opportunities for reaching a broader audience and even gaining more customers. Those of us who have been in the glass industry for a long time…
As the world becomes increasingly digital, we may be tempted to ask if there is still a place for analog systems and tools in our daily work routines. There are many areas where the question comes into play, but for now let’s focus on measuring and layout. Many of our favorite hand tools have remained…
Earlier this month I was having a conversation with a fellow glass shop owner. He reminded me about the importance of taking risks and trying new things. We talked about techniques for approaching contractors with an eye toward gaining new projects. It occurred to me that the same principles apply in many areas of business…
Like a lot of shop owners, I have tried providing just about every type of product and service available. There is no doubt it is a good thing to be well-rounded as glazing service provider. Although the industry is already specialized, there is still no way for a single company to master every product and…
When talking to other glass industry professionals, I understand we are all having a similar challenge. Employers are finding it difficult to hire the help that they need. This is especially true when it comes to qualified individuals. As we all know, many have been forced to stay home over the past year due to…
Unconventional Glass Projects The part of project consultations that I enjoy most is meeting people. I also love the challenge of seeing the project through their eyes, and then helping them to develop it. There is an opportunity to make their idea a reality, and as an innovator, that appeals to me. Many times, the…
Hi Chris, I’ve been reading through your blog and really appreciate all the information. We’re having an issue with a glass shower door and fixed panel we had installed and would really like to get your opinion on the work done. This is actually the second time they’ve installed the glass, the first time the…
Click here to listen to the audio interview Max Perilstein is founder of Sole Source Consultants, a consulting firm for the building products industry that specializes in marketing, branding, communication strategy and overall reputation management, as well as website and social media, and codes and specifications. Max Perilstein’s blog | Glass Magazine From the Fabricator-…
My conversation with GCS Glass & Mirror founder Brandon Nicastro (Formerly Grand Canyon State Glass) Click here for the audio file: https://www.patreon.com/posts/25676832 GCS Glass and Mirror was founded in 2013 has two locations: Denver 720-601-1124 Phoenix 602-828-8276 Check out their website at http://gcsglassandmirror.com
Hi, My husband and I bought a small townhouse in the Shelter Lagoon complex in Santa Cruz. The previous owner installed a shower in the small half bath upstairs. There is a drain in the floor with no shower pan. A shower curtain hangs from the ceiling. We’re concerned about whether the current configuration will…
This is a new product that I am pretty excited about! The Luna series of mirrors with built-in LED lighting are very cool. I just received my Halo mirror the other day, and found it really easy to install. It came with the screws, anchors, and wire nuts needed to complete the installation. The directions…
https://youtu.be/ttsuCeoZKxE A recent visitor sent me this video, illustrating his shower enclosure issue …and this was my response: Hi Bill, Here is the best solution, in my opinion, for both sides of your door. The part number is SDTWT2 and the manufacturer is CR Laurence. You can get these from your local glass shop. If…
From: Belinda Shaw We are in the process of getting a quote for a frameless shower. I recently saw a post from your archives about not using silicone around the base of the glass to seal from water. “Frameless shower enclosers are not designed to be completely water -tight.” I am very interested not using…
I recently received this comment / question from a reader: Great services that you provided for installing a new shower door. But I have one question for you. Do you service for repairing purposes? -Sharon Reams Thanks for your question, Sharon. We have been blessed with many, many local customers. Although we do provide repair…
We get calls from people who have purchased shower enclosures online and are looking for qualified technicians to install them. In the past, we have made it our policy to avoid installing customer-supplied shower door kits. There are so many different types of enclosures made by various companies… We have found it to be a…
Chris, As shown in the attached picture, our contractor installed our new glass shower panel using only one bracket (along the tiled wall near the top of the panel). A clear adhesive (supposedly “the best material in the business”) was also used along that tiled wall, as well as along the bottom of the panel…
Many people who are having frameless shower enclosures installed are looking for the least amount of hardware possible. The challenge to keeping the hardware minimal is greatest when the door hinges from a fixed panel. The stress that is going to be placed on the glass needs to be taken into consideration. When a door…
We have been receiving more calls recently for information about painted glass for kitchen and bathroom back splashes. People have been using custom pained glass for walls, cabinets, doors, and even floors on the east coast for a long time. It seems to be catching on here on the west coast as well. Of course,…
Love your blog. We recently had an install where the door and supporting panel were installed but the panels were 1/8″ shorter than the rest of the shower. The company wants to grind the other two panels to remedy the situation. My preference would be got the two panels be remade and reinstalled. What is…
Hi. I purchased online a 3/8″ glass frameless swing door with panel for my fiberglass shower insert. I am struggling with hanging the door. I put the molly anchors (plastic looks like they were designed for tile) in the holes I drilled and they just dropped into the insert since they had no lip. There…
Online I came across a post from Chris about new adhesives that work great to adhere metal shower handles to a glass shower door. Can you recommend any specific product names? I’ve seen some sites that suggest rear-view mirror adhesives such as J-B Weld. Might those work? Thanks. Skip in Dallas Hi Skip, Yes, I…
We were recently contacted by a gentleman who had a shower enclosure installed in a neighboring community (Santa Clara).The job went terribly wrong, and he needed some help. He was looking for advice about what to do about the poor glass fitting and bad caulking job done by the previous glass contractor. My advice to…
This phenomenon is known as “black-edge,” and is especially a problem near the coast.
How difficult is it to replace the gaskets in the frameless glass shower door hinges? Do you have to take the door all the way off or can you do it one hinge at a time and leave the other two hinges attached? If you do have to take the door all the way off, do…
Hello, I’m trying to install tub shower door. When I put in the inside panel the bottom part touches the bottom bumper but on the top there is a two gap. I tried adjusting the rolling wheels but nothing workings. I’m thinking of either cutting the wall jamb on the side of the gap or…
Hi Chris, My 3 piece L shape frameless shower was installed about a month ago and the original installer had a bit of trouble lining up the top corner of the L in the two glass pieces that came together above garden tub ledge and 6″ wide piece on front. He also cut his hand…
Hi Ron, Thanks for your email, this is a great question… Warping is a common side-effect of the glass tempering process. The thinner the glass, the more prone it is to becoming bowed during tempering. I’m guessing that the glass in your sliding bypass doors is ¼” thick, and is more vulnerable to this type…
I recently had a Coral sliding frameless glass door installed in my shower enclosure. The doors each have euro through the glass towel bars installed. The mounting screws for the towel bars scrape against each other when the doors are opened from either side. The installer said we could just pull the towel bar towards…
Hi Chris I have looked through your blog and haven’t noticed this addressed, so any help you can give would be most appreciated. We have a frameless glass door on our shower. The lower hinge is pulling away from the ceramic tiled wall that it is secured to. The plate is still tight against the…
Hi Chris, Glad I found you! I recently purchased a glass shower enclosure for a project I’m working on. The enclosure features two 15 inch stationary panels with roughly a 28 in door between them. The panels are connected by rails at the top and bottom that support the door. Each stationary panel is fastened…
Hello, Your help with this issue could save me a lot of time and money. We remodeled our bathroom over a year ago and had a frameless glass shower unit installed. Following the installers advise, we applied Rain-X to the glass before using the unit. Over a short period of time, we noticed a checker-board…
Chris, I have seen frameless showers with the glass resting in metal channels where it contacts the tile, you have also discussed recessing the channel into the tile (butting the tile up to both sides of the channel). Are there any pros and cons to having the channel on top of the tile vs recessed….
Amazing blog, Chis! I’m replacing a very small shower insert in my basement (32×32) to a larger custom tiled shower. The new shower will have glass on 2 sides. It will probably end up being 44×36. I’m leaning towards a framed shower because I don’t want leaking. I’m very concerned about mold because of the…
Hi, Great blog. I am a homeowner with zero knowledge of showers. We are custom building our house and my architect wants to put in a curbless shower in our master bath. Glass, frameless with a hinged door (to swing in and out). The shower is not huge. My friend tells me curbless showers can…
Hi Chris We’ve had our bathroom remodeled and I have a question about the frameless shower door. The glass was custom measured but when the door was installed the gap between the door and the adjacent glass isn’t uniform. It is 1/8″ at the top and 3/8″ at the bottom. I’ve asked the contractor to…
Hi Chris Love your blog! Quick question. I have two homes with high end frameless glass shower doors. On two occasions I have left shower doors open for a few days, returning home to find the doors hanging too low (and not able to fully close). This has happened at each house. I assume this…
Hello Chris, We been renovating for a while now and read your blog pretty often. Lots of helpful suggestions and thank you very much for that. My question is about the shower glass height. What is the space between tiled shower ceiling and the glass? The shower fan is about 1 m away from the…
To whom it may concern. Not sure about the protocol here but I will ask away… Please find attached a picture of the finished white carrera marble bathtub wall with an end view of the mosaic and ½” pencil tile that borders it. The pencil tile protrudes 3/8” from the finished tile wall. Obviously, there…
This is a project we just completed near Seascape Resort in Santa Cruz County: [youtube=http://youtu.be/JoiVM0RCleA]
Hello Chris, We had our shower doors put in fourteen years ago. They have a aluminum frame around and on the doors. I find that the clear caulking around the frame is getting quite dirty with mildew, and some of it has also come out in some places. Is it ok to remove this clear…
Hello, I’ve been reading the info on your website and wonder if I may ask a question. I would come to your shop but we live in Rochester, NY. We have a frameless shower door and the seal is coming loose. Can you recommend an adhesive so I can attach the seal? Thank You. Kind…
Chris Nearly four years ago we remodeled our bathroom and purchased a frameless shower. Tuesday when I was in the kitchen, there was the sound of an explosion. I ran upstairs to find the panel next to the door had imploded. I never knew this could happen and have googled and found out that it is…
Hi, I just saw your youtube video and thought I would take you up on your offer to answer a question. I have an older, one piece fiberglass shower stall enclosure (attached pictures) with door dimensions of 65 x 28 1/8 inches. It currently has a piano hinged older aluminum shower door that is showing…
Hello, I happened upon your blog and am very impressed with the wealth of information there! I just had a new shower enclosure (corner) put in, and am wondering whether it is necessary to treat the glass with some kind of sealant. The prior glass would get cloudy pretty quickly (I’m not sure whether our…
Chris, I have a frameless shower door that swings freely in both directions. There is no catch and no sweep on the bottom of the door. For the first several years after installation the door would always return to rest at an exactly centered position when closed. If moved an inch or two in one…
We recently completed a master bath remodel including a glass enclosed shower. At the topmost opening edge of the door, it is ever so slightly scraping against the stationary frame edge. In your experience, is this cause for concern or remediation? It was doing this from the start and isn’t getting worse. Thoughts? Thanks, Billie…
Nice reading your blog. You are fair when assessing others work. That’s nice to see in this day and age. Everyone of my immediate competitors here in southern N J seemed to be more concerned with comparing themselves to their competitor than stating what they can do Liked your comments on the shower you installed,…
Chris, I am so glad I discovered your site! We live in Birmingham, AL and are in the final phase of a major double bathroom remodel. We went very modern with barrier free entries to the shower enclosures. When the glass installers put the glass panels in place, they drilled and secured clips on the…
Dear Chris, Thank you for your wonderful blog, as a previous poster has said, it’s made it Down Under? I have a problem I was wondering if you might be able to answer. A contractor recently messed up the caulking on my newly installed frameless shower screen, smearing silicone all over the glass and spreading…
These days there are more and more people requesting frameless heavy glass enclosures for their bathtub showers. Several years ago, people began asking if this was a possibility… today, this is pretty common. There are newer innovations that incorporate sliding glass panels with heavy glass enclosures that are suitable for bathtubs. Among these are the…
I LOVE shower doors. This business is such a great source of challenges and opportunities to be creative. This weekend, I was able to complete the installation of a very nice heavy glass steam shower enclosure in Santa Cruz. The project turned out very nice, and I’m really pleased with the result. There were,…
Good morning Chris, We are installing a few frameless unit in my house in Hollywood. In all cases, with no doors……just a fixed panel. I am experienced with construction, but certainly no expert with glass showers. We are confident our hot mop was properly installed and will be effective. We are floating the floors and…
A big part of what makes Showcase Shower Door the best choice for shower doors and enclosures in the Monterrey Bay area is the fact that we use the latest technologies to come up with the best solutions for our customers. One great tool available for frameless shower enclosure design is a product from C….
Chris, I have a Kohler Salient Porcelain enamel cast iron shower pan. My wife wants a frameless pivot door for this. With a 60″ opening, is there adhesive strong enough to bond to the pan without a mechanical screw connection? One installer claimed he “routinely” screws into the cast iron base. I am concerned about…
Hello! I saw you through Google and hoped you may be able to answer my question. I am re-caulking my shower enclosure and I noticed that there are some slots along the bottom of the inside of my shower enclosure. Before removing the caulk, these slots were harboring mildew and mold and spewing it out…
Hello there! We just replaced a shower door in a very small bathroom with no wall space for a towel bar. Without realizing it, our contractor purchased a lovely shower door which has ‘knobs’ rather than the shower handle/towel bar. Is there any way to retrofit a handle onto the door? Does such a product…
Hello, I am wondering if you could give me the information explaining the basic difference in Diamond Seal and Clarvista Glass? I understand that Clarvista is comparable to Showerguard Glass but need to be sure of the differences? Thank you, Jana Hi Jana, That is a great question. I have to admit that…
Hello Chris – I have found your website most informative and helpful, and appreciate your experience and goodwill! We would currently like to install a new frameless glass sliding tub door across our standard 60 inch bathtub. We have an existing architectural detail that is challenging us. The tile listel and borders on either side…
The vast majority of customers use clear glass in their European style shower enclosures. The reason for this is obvious. More and more homeowners are using expensive tile, marble, and granite in their shower stalls, and they don’t want to cover it up with obscured glass. Low-iron glass, also known as “extra clear” or “starphire”…
For several years now, we have been offering Diamond Seal Systems protective coatings for glass as an option on shower doors. When we first began partnering with Micro MED, the makers of Diamond Seal, customers still viewed it as a sort of a novelty. People weren’t quite convinced that the product really worked. In fairness,…
Work was completed, on schedule, at the Beach Street Inn and Suites in Santa Cruz last month. To date, this is the biggest job that we have performed, and we are really happy with the results. Installing 12 heavy glass frameless shower enclosures in the rooms being renovated at the Beach Street Inn (formerly Terrace…
Hello, I came across your website/blog when looking for opinions on mounting a frameless shower door through glass tile. If you have a moment to offer your opinion I would appreciate it but I also understand if you don’t have time to opine on a project in Minnesota. The wall is 2×4 stud-1/2” backer board-acrylic…
Some people want to know whether they can upgrade their existing shower enclosure to a European style “frameless” shower enclosure without having to replace their tile. We recently had a customer who had upgraded their bathroom, and had some regrets about having settled for a standard, manufactured shower enclosure. The biggest challenge to replacing a…
I would say that the question I am most frequently asked is whether or not there is a practical way to protect shower glass from water damage. These days, customers are remodeling their bathrooms using granite, marble, and high-end tile work. They are looking for a frameless glass enclosure that will accent the beauty of…
Here are some before and after photos of a shower enclosure that we replaced this past week in Aptos. George and Jackie are a lovely couple of senior citizens who were referred to me by Josh McAuley of McAuley & Son Custom Tile (247-9856.) The couple had spoken to a few different companies about getting…
This past week I had the pleasure of installing a shower enclosure for an existing customer. This was the second of three shower doors that we will be installing for her. The first shower door that we installed was in the master bathroom, which had been newly remodeled. We were able to install the second…
The frameless “Euro-style” heavy glass shower enclosures and doors have become really popular lately. When I first went into business for myself back in 2004, about one in five of the shower enclosures people bought were of the heavy glass variety. Today, the vast majority of people want frameless heavy glass enclosures… probably eight-out-of-ten. There…
There are many things that you need to consider when selecting a company to install your frameless shower enclosure. Of course, price is always a factor, but it shouldn’t be the deciding factor when it comes to fine custom glass work. You definitely want a company that has been around for a while… one with…
Do you have a mirror in your bathroom that has started to develop dark, cloudy looking discoloration at the bottom? Your mirror is suffering from “Black Edge.” The silvering on the back of your mirror has been infiltrated by a type of contaminant that has begun eating it away like a cancer. It is actually…
Business is brisk here at Showcase Shower Door. This October marked five years in business in Santa Cruz County, and we are fortunate to have made quite a reputation for ourselves. One of the things that helps us to compete with the many glass shops in Santa Cruz are the relationships that we have with…
Being environmentally conscious almost goes without saying when you do the bulk of your work in Santa Cruz County. Our customers are also neighbors, and we all love the natural beauty and excellent climate Santa Cruz offers. We have the ocean, the redwoods, the mountains, the parks, the beach, and all of the great people…
This is a very modern and popular option for shower enclosures. It is a completely frameless, heavy glass sliding door for your shower stall. The enclosure that you see here was installed in Santa Cruz, California. The glass is 3/8″ clear, and the hardware is brushed stainless steel. The enclosure is manufactured by Cardinal Shower…
One option for a bathtub shower combination is called a “shower screen.” A shower screen can be any thickness, typically from 1/4″ to 1/2,” and can be fixed or on hinges. Some shower screens are made using obscured glass, while others are clear. Fixed shower screens can be mounted using a U channel or with…
August 4, 2010 This is one of the frameless shower enclosures we have been working on in the past couple of days. The home is located in Aptos, CA near Freedom Blvd. This bathroom was recently remodeled, and we were hired to add the finishing touches. This heavy glass frameless enclosure is constructed using clear…
July 30, 2010 This is an interesting innovation that we came up with for our customers who have very little space in their bathrooms. In the past, having a small bathroom meant that you had no choice but to use sliding bypass doors. Today, most customers want heavy glass, frameless, “euro-style” shower enclosures. What you…
