Best way to install a frameless glass shower door on a non-plumb wall?

last year

last modified: last year

We are installing a frameless shower door on a wall that is not plumb, and leans by over an inch over the 6' span the door will cover.

Replacing the wall is not an option for a number of reasons, so we are looking for the best way to handle the existing conditions. We are using professional glass door installers and will of course have them measure and propose their preferred plans, but curious to know how others have handled this and what I should be looking for in their proposals.

I think my options are:

1) Scribe a fixed glass panel to the non-plumb wall and then hinge the door off of that. We have room to do that and it seems it might be the best plan.

2) Hinge the door off of the non-plumb wall, but have one hinge built out--not sure this is feasible since there would then be a gap.

3) Somehow try to address this with the tilework.

Our tiler would like to run the tile along the wall (i.e., following the slope) for aesthetic purposes rather than using thinset to build it out to level it, since the difference in thickness of the thinset will be noticeable by the top of the tilework. (Tile will go up 7' and glass will be 6'.) This makes sense for appearance but I want to understand whether that would create a different issue.

The other side of the shower opening is a pony wall, so I don't think we can hang the door there--but maybe we can? We put in blocking for hinges/clips in the walls on all sides so there's flexibility on that front.

Our tile design does end with bullnose tile, so the last way out there idea is to transition from bullnose to mudcap as we go up the wall, and absorb the difference there. (The tile comes in both in the same size/color.) This seems like it would be very tricky to pull off at this point, though.

Am I missing any other solutions to consider, however imperfect? Thanks!

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artemis78
Original Author

last year

Thanks--talked to one of the glass companies giving a quote and they agree that it is not a big deal, and something they deal with often in our area of older homes. So I'm going to let the tilesetter do what he advises for appearance and stop thinking about the door. Whew!

Comments (6)

BW_TX
last year
I think ideally the hinge would be on the plumb wall and the fixed panel would be on the non-plumb wall. Our glass installer didn't like to have the hinge connected to the large fixed panel, but they did suggest one option of having a short fixed panel (3-4") and then attach the hinge/door to that. We ended up having the door hinge to the tile/plumb wall. If it was slightly out of plumb, attaching it to the non-plumb wall might not be that big of a deal, but at 1" that would be too big of a gap for a built out hinge (and I would think there would be a gap where lots of water could splash out).
artemis78
Original Author
last year
last modified: last year
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.)
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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...
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You have a workable situation very similar to one we encountered a couple of years ago when we had a frameless shower door installed in a renovated bathroom. I would HIGHLY recommend that you have a professional do the installation from the measurement, ordering, and final installation. Due to circumstances I won't go into, an installer who did not make the initial measurements tried to do the installation for our project. He was unable to make the shower door work. To make a long story short, it took several months to get it right. The good news was that we had worked with a reputable kitchen-bath showroom who stood behind their product so we didn't suffer any loss other than the inconvenience of the delay. Had we been the ones who had done the measurements, I'm afraid we would have had to absorb the financial loss of a quite expensive shower door.
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Custom fit to fit the space is a whole lot more difficult when it goes from straight cut panes of glass to something that will mold around a bench. No two designers could agree on whether I would tile or dry wall the outside of the half wall and where the tile should end I've done this once, and what we did (this was with glass block on top of the half wall instead of frameless glass) was waterproof the top and inside of the wall, and then tiled the entire wall, top front and back. We then brought the wall tile out to where the glass block was going to be. Had it not been glass block, my recommendation would have been to bring the wall tile out so as to be flush with the front of the FINISHED wall (where the face of the tile on the front of the wall will be). In my mind, the only other possibility would be to obviously tile the inside of the half wall, but then cap the top with bullnose, on both edges, bringing the tile out to the front edge of the top (of course, AFTER waterproofing the top and inside of the wall), and then end the wall tile at the outside edge of the half wall. Unfortunately, my laptop's in being worked on and the pic that shows the one that I did is not in my photobucket account.
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1/2"-5/8" is a huge gap, in most cases, the glass would be custom cut to at least meet the max tolerance, but when dealing with an out-of-the-box unit it will be difficult to install it on the out-of-level surface exceeding max allowance, and most likely it will always leak. The max out of level tolerance is 1/4" if I'm not mistaken. You can try to use a shower door plastic seal, drop one end that might work, but you will always deal with constant adjustments.
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millworkman
last year
"Scribe a fixed glass panel to the non-plumb wall and then hinge the door off of that."

This!! Done all the time. Make the fixed panel out of 1/2" and the door 3/8", will give you a bit more strength
artemis78 thanked millworkman
artemis78
Original Author
last year
Thanks! It won't look odd for the door and panels to be different glass thickness?
millworkman
last year
Nope, it will not look odd.
artemis78 thanked millworkman

Best way to install a frameless glass shower door on a non-plumb wall?

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