You may have swung, and pivoted, shower doors in your bathroom, but sliding shower doors have the edge overall in this category, only because of their space-saving, and yes, elegance.
Imagine taking up interior duties of the bathrooms after moving into a newly furnished house, and you get stuck with the final piece of the puzzle: installing a classy shower door for the shower, you so smoothly prepared.
Well, there is absolutely nothing to worry about. It is a brief and friendly tutorial on installing sliding shower doors. Follow the instructions, and you will be left with something very nice indeed.
Before going into a full-fledged tutorial, here is why you actually should consider installing sliding shower doors in the first place.
Firstly, as mentioned earlier, these fashionable doors bring about a sense of attractiveness to the bathroom. It feels like a touch of grace has been added to it.
To add to that, these doors are extremely low maintenance and highly durable; unless you jump right through it due to reasons unknown.
These are customizable doors, as the following tutorial will seemingly point out. And finally, shower screens bring a sense of invasiveness to the room, which is not the case with transparent glass doors.
Here Is How To Install Sliding Shower Doors?
In Your Bathroom.
- Measuring and assembling.
- Installing the frame.
- Installing the glass door.
Taking measurements and collecting necessary equipment
The process of installing sliding shower doors is much easier than it appears. Due to the simplicity of the task, a whole of an array of equipment is not necessary at all.
A tape measure, power drill and drill bits, screwdriver, a pencil with dark lead, Silicon-based caulk for bathroom use and a caulking gun, plastic wall anchor, hammer, masking tape, a level, and of course, the door itself.
Remember, when purchasing, the door should come with wall screws, track pieces and rollers. The smoother the rollers, the smoother the door will slide.Once all the essential equipment have been collected, the time for taking measurements to arrive. Grab the measuring tape and take measurements of the vertical and horizontal space the door will fit in.
This is to order the door from a store, which you cannot buy without exact dimensions.
For your information, the tracks that will hold the door should be a tiny bit longer than the measurements you took, so as to open you up for future upgrades.
Installing the frame of the door
A few measurements are taken in this step as well. However, we did not include these in the previous section due to the fact that, these are more related to the installation process rather than the preparation and collection process.
It is suggested that you take all required measurements beforehand, which will make the transition of the door from the floor of the bathroom to the perfect frame that you will soon install, smooth and easy.
Start by taking the measurements and marking the position where the track will be fitted. Measure the length of it, to calculate the center point. This will be pretty crucial afterward.
Hold the door in a place where it will be fitted, to figure out the positions where the screw will go into later on when you will be installing the door.
Next, take the caulking gun that has been exciting you from the time you purchased it from the store. Cut off the tip after loading and fitting the Silicon caulk into the gun.
The cutting is for allowing the flow. Aim and execute a thin line of caulk to the underside of the threshold.
The significance of all this the fact that, Silicon-based caulk is impermeable to water, making the shower waterproof, efficient and clean, as water cannot escape beneath the rail. This material is perfect for attaching the bottom rail to the tub.
What follows is you lining the metal threshold up with the mark in the center point of the tub’s lip and press it down to secure it. This fully smooths out the caulk that is underneath and is very important.
You have to make sure everything you fitted till now is fully secure and perfectly lined up with the marks that you scribbled early on.
As soon as this loses the moisture and thoroughly dries up, everything will lose their alignment and the entire project till now will go to utter waste.
Dried-up caulk will harden up and cannot be adjusted any more, losing any chance of modification. We can recommend you to use the masking tape you bought to secure and hold everything in the position, to be on the safe side of things, but it is entirely a personal choice of comfort.
Another precaution that you might want to consider is to hold up the side columns after everything has dried up to re-check all necessary alignments.
Drill markings might not line up as planned, but that is entirely normal, as you just have to redraw them again. Use the level to carry out one final check.
Moving on, take the drill machine and do a little pre-drilling into the holes you marked before. We are assuming you are well aware of how to use this appliance, so we are not going into a mini tutorial for that.
Set the drill bits into the power drill and drill through the pre-marked points approximately about 2 inches. The drill bits are specially designed to pierce through the ceramic.
These are very sharp at the tip and wide at the rear, making them highly efficient for piercing through some difficult textures. Again, masking tape can be of use because of its sticky nature.
Tiles fitted in bathrooms are usually very suave, making the drill bits skid quite easily. These have a chance of causing major accidents and injuries. A little masking tape over the markings can help you avoid such dangers.
Take your wall anchors and keep hammering them into the newly formed holes until they are firmly inside. These anchors are provided along with the door of the store you purchased from.
These serve the sole purpose of providing a base for the screws to grip into. Without these, they would have no grip.
By now, you are very nearly done with the entire process of installation, although it does not look like it. It is time to set the column up. Hold it up and screw it in. Secure it by screwing the wall anchors in with the corresponding wall screws.
A perfect fit is expected at this stage. If not, again, the entire process goes to waste, and you have to start again. The other column has to be set up precisely similarly to the one that you, hopefully, just did.
A gentle recommendation from us might be to use a little amount of Silicon caulk in the gap where the tile meets the column.
It is to avoid any form of leakage, as has been the task of the caulk since the beginning of the entire process. In fact, wherever you might feel seeping of water is possible, use thin layers of caulk to prevent it.
Finally, install the cross-member. If this does not slot in perfectly, then. Well, it most definitely will. There is absolutely nothing to worry about.
Installing the glass door
Well, here we are. The concluding stage of the installation procedure: setting the glass door into the slot you so dearly prepared all this while. If everything has gone well till now, you should have no complications in carrying out this final process. Hold the door up, ensuring the orientation of the door is proper; especially the handle. Our tutorial is not about glass doors whose rollers you yourself have to set up, so that saves you a lot of hassle at this stage.
Exercise the glass door in a way that the rollers fit flawlessly inside the track. Once maneuvered, gently lower the door. It is a crunch process that requires a lot of finesse but is entirely feasible no matter what, so do not sweat on this.
With a few tries, the door will slot in slickly. As soon as it is installed, slide it back and forth a few times to check on the flawlessness of the movement.
Considering everything does look and feel great, you are now left with a class glass door for your shower, which you yourself installed from scratch, with a little guideline provided by us. Washroom breaks during stayovers at friends’ will not be a matter of envy anymore. You are the owner of an incredibly cool bathroom bragging an exquisite shower with a glass door in front.
The potential is endless. But that is for the future. Right now, we are just happy to help you with the installation of a sliding glass door, which you needed in your bathroom.
