A frameless enclosure in a Paterson bathroom starts with a count, not a cut. Before anyone talks about hinges or finishes, the opening has to be worked out in pieces of glass: how many it needs, and where the joints between them fall. Old bathrooms in this city rarely answer that the same way twice, because the walls, the curb and the direction the door has to swing all get a vote. So we settle the count standing in the room, and we put the joints where you can reach them with a cloth.
Before any glass is cut, an opening has to be laid out, and most of them can be laid out more than one way. A single door where the opening is narrow. A door with a fixed inline panel beside it where it is wider. A door and a return where the shower turns a corner. A panel notched around a knee wall where the room gives us no choice. Each extra piece adds an edge to seal, a joint to keep clean and one more line running through the glass you look at from the doorway. So we work the layout down to the fewest pieces the opening allows, then place the seams where a hand and a squeegee can actually reach them. The glass is 3/8 or 1/2 inch tempered safety glass, cut and edged in our Lodi shop to the numbers off your own walls.
Each of those votes adds a piece of glass or takes one away. A curb that turns a corner adds a return, fixed glass along the second side. When the arc of the door runs into a vanity or a toilet, one wide door becomes a narrower door and a fixed panel. A wall that runs well out of plumb can earn a panel of its own, cut to follow it, so the door does not have to. And a narrow, square opening may need nothing but the door. The hinge side falls out of the same reading, since it has to land on an edge that can carry the weight. Get the count right and the panel sizes follow from it. Get it wrong and the usual cure is one more piece of glass, added to correct a swing nobody planned for.
Here is what changes the stakes in this city. Paterson holds a great many two- and three-family houses, through Eastside, Riverside and Sandy Hill among others, and a second-floor bathroom in one of them sits directly over another household's rooms. A shower door that lets water past a joint does not simply wet a floor. It finds the framing, and by the time it shows on the ceiling below it has been going on a while. The brownstones and Victorians around the Great Falls Historic District are built the same way upstairs, and so are plenty of the Hillcrest and Wrigley capes and colonials, where the room underneath belongs to the same household. That is why the joints in an enclosure get more attention from us than the hardware does.
So the measure is slow on purpose. We template the opening by hand in your unit, note where the tile stops, what the curb is doing and how far each wall runs out, and the panels are built to those numbers in our Lodi shop, about twelve minutes south of the city. On install day the crew arrives with the glass, the hardware and the sealant for that one bathroom, sets the panels, fits the sweep and seals the wall joint. Before they leave they say how long the silicone needs. The old door leaves the building with them, hardware and all. The crew is ours, licensed and insured, and it is the same crew whether the bathroom belongs to you or to a tenant.
Paterson bathrooms and jobs from Clifton, Passaic, Haledon and Prospect Park. Look at how few pieces of glass each enclosure actually uses, where the seams land, and which edge of the opening each door was hung from.
More custom glass in Paterson: sliding & bypass shower doors, semi-frameless shower doors, shower door replacement. See everything on our Paterson, NJ page. Frameless Shower Doors nearby: Paramus, Ridgewood, Hackensack, Fort Lee, Lodi, Midland Park, Englewood, Teaneck, Fair Lawn, Mahwah, Wyckoff, Tenafly, Franklin Lakes, Ramsey, Glen Rock, Montclair, Wayne, Carlstadt. 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.
Yes. The Lodi showroom on Industrial Rd is open to anyone, weekdays 9 to 5 and Saturday 9 to 4, and nobody is asked who owns the building. Whole enclosures stand assembled on the floor there, and one wall carries the glass options and the hardware finishes side by side. What a tenant cannot do is approve the job, so tell us who signs off and the quote stays with you. There is no showroom in Paterson itself, and Lodi is about twelve minutes south.
They will hear the drilling, and not a great deal else. The hinges and clips for a frameless door anchor into the tiled walls of your bathroom, so nothing goes through the floor and nobody needs to get at their ceiling. The loud part is short and comes early, before the glass is set and sealed. If the household below would rather be out for it, mention that when you book, and the install can be set for a time that suits them.
Two things you will notice. The door usually hinges off the fixed panel rather than the wall, which pushes the swing a few inches further into the room, so we look at what is standing there before settling the hand. And the handle lands nearer the return, which sometimes moves a towel bar. The third piece is fixed glass, held by a clip at each end with a sealed vertical joint, and it adds one more vertical joint to what you see from the doorway.
Yes, and the opening tends to have as much say in it as anything. Frameless asks for a hinge edge the wall can actually carry and enough clear floor for the door to swing; where a bathroom will not give both, another style fits the same opening without a fight. So the answer comes back per bathroom rather than per building, and nothing about one unit obliges the next one to match it.
Clips, or a shallow channel along one edge, depending on the layout and the weight of the panel. The clips are small and land at the points where the glass needs support, and the door hinges either off that panel or off the wall beside it. It is a short hardware list, which is the whole idea of frameless, and every piece of it is drawn on the template rather than worked out once the glass has arrived.
No, but say it when you call. Panels go up on edge, one of us on each end, and the number that decides it is the tightest turn on the stairs rather than the count of flights. Tell us if a landing turns back on itself, if a rail narrows one, and which way the door at the top of the stairs opens. Those are the details that decide how a panel reaches the bathroom.
Photograph the opening square on with the new curb in the shot, and give us a rough width. We will tell you which layouts that opening will take and which one we would build in it. The in-home measure is free, the written quote after it is itemized and firm, and no glass goes on order before you have read it. Call or text (201) 460-1313.
Photograph the opening square on with the new curb in the shot, and give us a rough width. We will tell you which layouts that opening will take and which one we would build in it. The in-home measure is free, the written quote after it is itemized and firm, and no glass goes on order before you have read it. Call or text (201) 460-1313.
Text Jessica directly and she'll get right back to you. To speed things up, include:
