Two appointments, not one. The measure is a short visit, the glass is then fabricated to those numbers, and install day is a typical morning or afternoon of work for a standard enclosure. Larger enclosures, steam jobs and anything with awkward access run longer. Nobody should quote you a fixed clock time before seeing the opening.
A standard frameless door in a finished bathroom is a single visit. The crew lays down covering, masks the vanity, confirms the opening still reads the way it did at the measure, marks and drills the anchor points, sets the fixed panel, hangs the door, adjusts the hinges, fits hardware and seals, and runs the silicone. Most of the clock goes into drilling tile carefully and getting the panel plumb, not into the parts that look dramatic. Framed and sliding enclosures hang faster but prep slower, since the track and jambs have to be cut and set first. What a homeowner sees is a lot of measuring and marking, a short loud stretch of drilling, then a quiet hour where the glass is standing and everything is being trued a fraction at a time. Nobody rushes that last hour, because it is the part you look at every morning.
The waiting is not on the crew, it is on the glass. A custom panel is cut to your numbers, the edges are polished, holes and notches are machined, and only then is it tempered, because none of that can happen afterward. Hardware in a particular finish may be coming from elsewhere. That gap is why the measure should happen as soon as the tile is grouted rather than the week you want to shower, and why no one here will promise a date before the order is actually placed.
Some conditions add a trip, and it is better to know which. A wall with no blocking where a hinge needs to land. A curb that has to be shimmed or recapped. A steam enclosure with a transom meeting a ceiling that is not level. A panel that arrives damaged from shipping, which is rare but real, and which cannot be corrected on site because the piece was made to size. Silicone also has to cure before water touches it, so a bathroom normally sits unused overnight even when the day goes perfectly.
Usually it comes out at the start of that visit, which keeps the bathroom out of service once rather than twice. Mention it ahead of time if the old enclosure is framed and siliconed to the tile, because removal can lift grout or chip a tile edge, and you may want a tile repair lined up behind it.
Someone should be, at least at the beginning and the end. The crew confirms swing direction and handle side against the room one last time before anything is drilled, and at the finish you want to watch the door close and hear how long the silicone needs. Clear the bathroom and the path to it before they arrive.
Book the measure the week your tile is finished and the fabrication time runs while you are still painting. We will tell you what install day looks like for your specific opening, and you will have the layout and the price in writing before anything is ordered.
