Put a level on the ceiling above an older Tenafly shower and watch the bubble drift. Plaster ceilings in these houses are rarely dead flat, and a steam room has to close tight against whatever is up there. Glass runs full height, a header follows the real ceiling line, a vented transom sits above the door, and every joint gets sealed. That line gets measured before anything is drawn.
A steam enclosure seals along four lines: both jambs, the curb or pan, and the top. Three of those are usually straightforward. The top is where an older house gets interesting, because a plaster ceiling can wander a quarter inch or more from one side of the opening to the other. The answer is not simply a taller sheet of glass. It is a header cut to follow the actual ceiling line, a transom panel sized to what is left below it, and jamb channels scribed to walls that lean. Silicone finishes those joints. It does not fill a gap that should have been measured.
That is also why a steam job takes two trips rather than one. The first is a no-charge measure taken in the finished room: ceiling height at several points, the opening at several heights, the direction the door swings, where the bench and the niche ended up, and how the vent above the room works. Panels, header and transom are then cut and edged at our own bench in Lodi, and our crew comes back to set and seal them. Nothing is ordered off a plan drawing, because in a house this old the room as built and the room as drawn are seldom the same.
Nothing in a prewar Tenafly bathroom was drawn with a steam generator in mind, which is why steam here almost always arrives inside a full renovation instead of as an add-on. By the time we are useful, the room has been opened up, waterproofed and tiled, and the ceiling has either been leveled or it has not. Both are workable. What matters is that the finished surfaces get measured before glass is cut. Ceiling height decides the most: panel height, whether a transom earns its place, and how tall the door can be before it turns unwieldy.
The payoff in these houses is real. A dated bath with a stall nobody wanted to stand in becomes the room you head for first on a January morning, and the glass is what makes that possible. Our scope is the glass: panels, header, transom, hardware and the seals between them. The generator, the plumbing and the waterproofing behind the tile stay with your contractor, and we schedule around his work. Finishes are polished chrome, brushed nickel, matte black and oil-rubbed bronze, carried across the door hardware and the transom clamps alike.
Sealed steam rooms from bathrooms near Tenafly and across Bergen County. The part worth studying is the top edge, where a header meets a ceiling that was never perfectly flat.
More custom glass in Tenafly: frameless shower doors, sliding & bypass shower doors, semi-frameless shower doors, shower door replacement, custom mirrors, custom glass shower enclosures, bathtub shower doors, glass railings, commercial glass. See everything on our Tenafly, NJ page. Steam Shower Enclosures nearby: Paramus, Ridgewood, Hackensack, Fort Lee, Lodi, Midland Park, Englewood, Teaneck, Fair Lawn, Mahwah, Wyckoff, Franklin Lakes, Ramsey. Learn more about our steam shower enclosures statewide, or read the Shower glass thickness: 3/8″ vs 1/2″ and The ultimate guide to custom shower doors guides.
The header does. It has to sit tight enough that there is no route out over the top. In practice the header runs to the ceiling, the transom panel drops from it, and the last thin joint is sealed. On a ceiling that dips across the opening, the header is cut to follow that dip so the contact stays even the whole way. What you should not accept is a stock panel with a finger-wide gap above it.
Not on its own. A low ceiling can even work for you, since there is less volume to heat. What changes is the layout. A short wall may not leave room for a transom, so the door itself runs up to the header and the seal moves to the door top. A sloped section over the pan gets templated at the angle it actually sits at. All of that is measured before anything is decided.
Lodi, most likely, and it is the shorter drive at about sixteen minutes. Our main location, no appointment needed: weekdays from 9 until 5, Saturday until 4. What is worth the trip is the floor itself, full enclosure displays alongside the glass-and-finish selection wall, where half-inch glass can be held up against three-eighths before you commit to either. Midland Park, twenty-five minutes or so, works on appointments.
Some. Sealant joints in a room that gets hot and wet daily are wear items, the same way grout is. Wipe the glass down and leave the door cracked after a session so the room dries out, and look at the bottom sweep and the perimeter joints once a year. A joint that has pulled away at one end is a small fix caught early and a bigger one ignored.
Generally one to two weeks. The template happens once tile is finished and cured, then panels, header and transom are cut, edged, drilled and tempered in our Lodi shop, since tempered glass cannot be cut or drilled afterward. Installation is usually a single visit. If your contractor is holding a punch list open, tell us early and we will slot the template to fit his sequence.
Every finish we offer is built for a wet room: polished chrome, brushed nickel, matte black and oil-rubbed bronze. What shortens their life is not steam but cleaning. Acidic bathroom cleaners and abrasive pads take the finish off hinges and clamps faster than years of use ever will. A wipe with a soft cloth after the room cools is the whole maintenance routine.
Timing is the part people get wrong on steam. Call (201) 460-1313, or text Jessica the ceiling height over the pan and where the renovation stands today. Somebody comes out to Tenafly, reads the room against the tile already up, and puts the glass in writing.
Timing is the part people get wrong on steam. Call (201) 460-1313, or text Jessica the ceiling height over the pan and where the renovation stands today. Somebody comes out to Tenafly, reads the room against the tile already up, and puts the glass in writing.
Text Jessica directly and she'll get right back to you. To speed things up, include:
