Seven in the morning in a Fair Lawn Tudor with one full bath. Somebody is at the sink, somebody else needs the shower, and a hinged glass door wants a quarter circle of floor the room simply does not have. Sliding glass takes that argument away. Two tempered panels ride a slim track at the top and pass each other, so the door never leaves the plane of the opening and nobody gets backed into the vanity. We build them to your width, over a tub or on a curb, and cut every panel in our Lodi shop nine minutes away. The visit that starts it costs you nothing.
A bypass enclosure hangs everything from a header spanning the top of the opening. The panels hang from rollers riding inside it, so the weight of the glass travels up into that header and out into the two walls at either end. That makes the fastening the most important part of the job and the part nobody ever sees. We find out what is behind the tile at the jambs before anything gets set, because a header anchored into a hollow spot will sag over time and the panels will stop meeting square. Done properly, the glass moves with one finger and keeps moving for years, because nothing is fighting gravity in the wrong direction.
The rest of it is fit. The two panels overlap in the middle, and how much they overlap decides how wide the opening is when you step in, so the width has to be cut to your alcove rather than rounded to whatever size a box comes in. At the walls, a slim channel takes up the lean that older Fair Lawn framing always has. At the bottom, current hardware does away with the deep aluminum trough that trapped water and grit on the sliders these doors usually replace. The glass is tempered safety glass, and the track and handles come in polished chrome, brushed nickel, matte black or oil rubbed bronze.
Fair Lawn is a family borough and it is built like one: leafy streets, parks, and older houses that have been looked after. Plenty of them were finished before anyone expected a bathroom off every bedroom, so a single full bath does the whole job. That changes what a shower door has to be. It is not a piece of the room you open once and admire. It gets pushed, shoved and let go a dozen times a morning by people who are already running late. Bypass panels take that better than a hinged door does, because there is nothing to swing into whoever is standing at the sink and nothing to catch a towel bar on the way past.
Then there is the tub. In a Radburn colonial, a Tudor near Memorial Park or a cape over toward Warren Point, the main bath usually still has one, and in a house with a single bathroom it is not going anywhere. Sliding glass is the natural answer over a tub, because the panels run the length of the alcove and land on the tub deck with no threshold to step over. If you are taking the tub out entirely, your contractor handles the demolition, the pan and the tile, and we come in after those surfaces are set to template the opening and build glass for the new curb.
Tub alcoves, tiled curbs and wide openings, every panel built to width. Click a photo to see how the glass meets in the middle.
More custom glass in Fair Lawn: frameless 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 Fair Lawn, NJ page. Sliding & Bypass Shower Doors nearby: Paramus, Ridgewood, Hackensack, Fort Lee, Lodi, Midland Park, Englewood, Teaneck, Mahwah. Learn more about our sliding frameless shower doors statewide, or read the How much do shower doors cost in NJ? and Modern shower design ideas that last guides.
It changes the layout, not the answer. Glass over a tub can land on the tub deck itself or on a tiled ledge, and either one is normal work. What we check on the measure is whether that ledge runs level along its length and how wide it is, because the bottom seal and the wall channels have to sit flat on it. If it slopes, and older tile work often does, we adjust the panel height and the seal rather than force the glass down onto it. That is the sort of thing a template catches and a boxed size never will.
Roughly the width of the door itself, plus the space a person needs to stand clear while it opens. A hinged panel wants its own width of empty floor in front of the opening, and in a small bath that is most of the walkable space in the room. Bypass panels travel along the opening instead of out from it, so nothing is claimed at all. If you want to test it before deciding, tape the width of the opening onto the floor and look at what is left to stand on.
Not the way ours are built. The old aluminum sliders sitting in a lot of older Fair Lawn baths ran in a deep bottom channel, and that channel held water, soap and grit until it stopped draining and started smelling. Current bypass hardware carries the panels from the top instead, so the bottom is a low guide rather than a trough. It wipes down with the rest of the glass. Anyone who has gone at the old kind with a toothbrush notices the difference in the first week.
Both can slide, and on most bypass enclosures both do. That lets you open from either end, which matters when the shower head sits at one side or a vanity crowds one corner. Some layouts are better with one fixed panel and one that moves, usually where the opening is unusually wide or a return wall wants the glass anchored. We lay out both versions at the measure and tell you which one the room is asking for. Hardware and finish stay the same either way.
Two sliders that look identical from the doorway can price very differently, and the alcove is the reason. A wider opening takes more glass and a header that has to span it, so the width sets the floor. Above that sit the panel thickness, the finish on the track and the handles, and whether the walls run true enough to hang a header without extra work first. None of that is readable from a photograph. The measure is free, and the written quote splits glass, hardware and labor apart so you can see which line is carrying the total.
Lodi, and it is worth the nine minutes for this particular door. 80 Industrial Rd, open Monday through Friday 9 to 5 and Saturday 9 to 4. The full enclosure displays let you slide a panel back and forth and feel how much glass is actually hanging off that header, which is the part a photograph will never tell you, and the glass and finish selection wall puts the four finishes side by side. Fair Lawn has no location of its own. Midland Park, about sixteen minutes north, sees people by appointment.
Send a photo of the opening and we can usually tell you what will fit before anyone comes out. When you want it priced, the in home measure anywhere in Fair Lawn costs nothing, and the written quote lists the glass, the hardware and the labor on separate lines. Call or text (201) 460-1313.
Send a photo of the opening and we can usually tell you what will fit before anyone comes out. When you want it priced, the in home measure anywhere in Fair Lawn costs nothing, and the written quote lists the glass, the hardware and the labor on separate lines. Call or text (201) 460-1313.
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