Thanks folks- We got the fixed panel installed today, and it looks great. Man it was stressful though!!! I think I drove poor DH crazy with having to stop every few minutes to carefully think through the next step, and arrange wood/towels/bubblewrap on every hard surface in sight! But its in, plumb and square and looks great. UNFORTUNATELY........ the fabricator seems to have sent the wrong hinges for the door. They seem to be the self-closing 90-degree type, and we needed the adjustable ones for the angled door. Of course they are closed until Tuesday, argh!! (This after they also forgot the setting blocks -which I luckily was able to find at a glass store that was open on Saturdays- so I am not sure I will recommend them. We'll see how they handle the hinge thing. Maybe we are just not seeing how they'd adjust, but I dont think so...) Anyway, I should have been showering in my new shower tonight, but looks like I will have to wait another week! On the plus side- we did not upgrade to Starfire glass (it wasn't offered and I did not think to ask) and after reading about it on GW here, I was worried about the green glass color, but it turns out it looks really, really great with the other palette in the room :) Tomorrow: vanity install! lennym: let me see how this company handles the hinge issue and then I'll post about them. They were the cheapest online vendor I found; maybe in this case you get what you pay for? They've been responsive and helpful thus far, though, and I know they are in the process of moving their showroom this weekend, so it may be a one-time honest mistake...

$$$ detail and NOT retrofittable. This needs to be a new project, planned properly from the beginning. The average 7-10K shower price just jumped a good 3-5 grand for all of the meetings and fussiness in coordinating everyone. If you want more of a luxury space than an average tiled shower, like with slab stone walls, curbless entry, and other Houzz like details, your budget will need to expand exponentially. I've been involved with many bathroom remodels that easily cost more than the 83K price of my first house, adjusted for inflation. There isn't much limit on upper end costs.

I had this Metro Sliding Shower Door installed last week and also looked at the many installation instructions for doors I was considering. I also viewed this excellent Youtube installation video. The answers are: Yes, the installer drills all the way through the tile to attach the clips to the studs beneath. The glass is extremely heavy and one wants the most secure attachment possible. There are various ways to attach the fixed glass panel to the shower base. In some cases, the installer drills holes into the into the shower base to hold the threshold in place. In my case (and in the video) the glass is held in place without drilling (I have a threshold the runs the length of the fixed panel only). The thresholds of Kohler Levity shower doors run the width of the shower and are held in place by the wall jambs on either side. I specifically did NOT want holes drilled into my cast iron shower base. --amateur

Thanks--our challenge is that the plumb wall (which is new) is only a 42" high pony wall. But we could possibly have one hinge in that wall and the other on the glass panel that will be installed on top of the wall. The last crazy plan I came up with is to go with a custom shower curtain rod instead. (This shower was originally supposed to have a full wall to create an alcove with a shower curtain, but due to a lot of shifts as we went through the project to accommodate old house quirks, we switched to a pony wall with a glass enclosure to allow light into the shower enclosure.) If we attach it to a fixed panel on the non-plumb side, it would definitely be a short one. The shower is 42" long and the door was to be 27" so there is room to do that. (Leaving aside the part where we prefer the door hang from the wall than from a fixed panel, it has some benefits--there could be a towel hook behind the door, for instance.)