Big bathrooms punish thin glass. Span a wide opening with 3/8 inch and you feel it in the door: a little flex, a hinge that needs coaxing, a panel that never quite settles. Franklin Lakes baths run large, so the glass usually needs to be 1/2 inch, templated by hand and cut in our Lodi shop. Heavy glass, a handful of hinges and clips, and a fit taken off your walls instead of a catalog.
A half inch panel runs a little over six pounds a square foot, so a door and a fixed return in a large opening add up quickly. All of that weight lands on the hinge wall through two or three points, and those points need something solid behind the tile. On a bath still being framed we will tell your builder exactly where to put blocking before the board goes on. On a finished bath we find what is already there, and if the framing does not fall where the hinges want to be, the layout moves to suit the wall rather than the wall pretending to suit the glass.
Weight also decides how the opening gets divided. There is a practical limit to how wide one swinging panel can be before it becomes a chore to move and hard on its own hinges, so a wide entry usually becomes a door with a fixed return, or a door set between two stationary panels. Where those seams land is a decision, not an accident. We put them off the first line of sight when you walk in, and away from the shower head, so the joint is neither the thing you look at nor the thing water finds.
In a small bathroom the enclosure is something you stand in. In a Franklin Lakes primary bath it is something you look at from across the room, usually the tallest object in it, and often the only surface that is not stone or paint. That changes what the glass has to do. Proportion starts to matter more than clearance: how far the panels run against a cathedral ceiling, whether the top line sits level with a tile course or a window head, how much of the marble you can still see through it once the door is closed.
The houses out on those winding roads, the estates and newer custom builds in neighborhoods like Urban Farms, tend to give a bathroom real square footage and then fill it with detail. A tiled bench. A niche. A curb that steps down to a wide entry. None of that is our work, and every bit of it changes the glass. So we template after the tile is set and cured, on the finished surfaces, because a quarter inch of stone thickness moves everything downstream of it. Then the panels are cut once in Lodi and set by our own crew.
Shower glass our crew has templated, cut and set around Franklin Lakes and the towns nearest our Midland Park showroom. Open any photo and look at how the panels meet.
More custom glass in Franklin Lakes: sliding & bypass shower doors, semi-frameless shower doors, shower door replacement, custom mirrors, custom glass shower enclosures, steam shower enclosures, bathtub shower doors, glass railings, commercial glass. See everything on our Franklin Lakes, NJ page. Frameless Shower Doors nearby: Paramus, Ridgewood, Hackensack, Fort Lee, Lodi, Midland Park, Englewood, Teaneck, Fair Lawn, Mahwah, Wyckoff, Tenafly, Ramsey. Learn more about our frameless shower enclosures statewide, or read the How much do frameless shower doors cost in NJ? and Frameless vs. semi-frameless: which is right? guides.
A swinging panel gets heavy and awkward past about thirty inches, and the hinges feel it every time the door moves. Wider entries get divided instead. Usually that means one door hung beside a stationary piece, or a narrower door flanked on both sides. That keeps the load on each hinge sensible and the swing manageable around a bench or a mat. The division gets worked out at the measure, on your actual opening.
Not to the peak, and usually not as high as people expect. Glass has a practical height for one panel, and above a certain point you are buying weight and a taller seam without buying anything you can feel. We prefer to land the top line on something the room already owns: a tile course, the head of a window, the top of a niche. Steam is the exception, since that enclosure has to close off at the top.
Yes, and it is worth a five minute call before the board goes up. We will say where solid blocking belongs for hinges and clips, which wall makes the better hinge wall for the swing you want, and how much pitch the curb needs so the door does not drip outside the shower. None of it is hard to get right at framing. All of it is a headache once the stone is set.
Hinges, handles and clips are offered in brushed nickel and polished chrome, in matte black, and in oil-rubbed bronze. Match the valve and the door pulls if you want the room to read quietly, or let the glass hardware go darker than the plumbing if you want the enclosure to stand on its own. Bring a trim piece or a photo to the measure and we will hold finishes against it before anything is ordered.
It changes the whole enclosure. Steam has to be contained, so the opening gets closed off at the top with a header set at a height you choose, glass sealed to that line, and a transom above the door that vents so the shower can dry out afterward. Under a cathedral ceiling the header stops short of the peak instead of chasing the slope. That gets settled before the tile layout is final.
Our Midland Park showroom at 108 Greenwood Ave sits roughly twelve minutes away, an easy run through Wyckoff. It is by appointment, never a walk-in, and what it carries is samples, hardware finishes and glass. Full enclosures on display are a Lodi thing: our main location on Industrial Rd, about twenty-four minutes out, walk-ins from nine to five on weekdays and until four on Saturday. There is no Accurate location in Franklin Lakes itself.
From 108 Greenwood Ave it is about twelve minutes to a Franklin Lakes driveway, which is why the measure is easy to schedule and why coming back to check the opening a second time is no trouble. Reach Jessica at (201) 507-5918, by call or text.
From 108 Greenwood Ave it is about twelve minutes to a Franklin Lakes driveway, which is why the measure is easy to schedule and why coming back to check the opening a second time is no trouble. Reach Jessica at (201) 507-5918, by call or text.
Text Jessica directly and she'll get right back to you. To speed things up, include:
