To say my master bathroom is small would be an understatement. That’s why when renovating the bathroom, I carefully chose space-saving features for every single aspect of design – including the shower door. Now, the original shower was a prefabricated fiberglass enclosure that was approximately 28″ by 28″ – that’s less than the width of a standard doorframe! The original shower had a curtain, no door, and this caused issued which I discovered upon demolition of the bathroom. We figured there would water damage to the subfloor only because it was impossible to shower and keep all the water inside the enclosure. I knew that, if possible, I wanted a door for our new shower to prevent this issue in the future.
I was happy to discover an extra two inches on either side of the shower after taking out the fiberglass surround. We now have a standard size door, which meant I wouldn’t need to have something custom made. Unfortunately, due to the very small nature of my bathroom, I could not fit a door that swings out in one piece – which is what you’d find on the market at that size.
As you can see from the photo, the toilet would block the door from swinging open in either direction. This called for a more creative solution!
The obvious solution is to get a bi-fold door. Did you know they don’t make many bi-fold doors less than 32″ wide? Yeah, I didn’t either until I embarked on my search for a bi-fold door that was 30″ wide. I am happy to announce that I did find one, yes one, door that would fit my shower. For the months that I worked on this bathroom, I kept an eye out on the price of this shower door and purchased it when it was about $300 off.
Installation was rather straightforward. If you aren’t scared of handling large pieces of glass, I’d say this isn’t too hard of a DIY – just make sure you measure twice (or 100 times) and drill once. Basically you install the top, bottom and sides first and then hang the glass pieces at the end. The side pieces are composed of two parts, one that fits inside the other, that you can adjust according to the size of your opening width.
This was probably one of the more expensive purchases during the project but totally worth it. We have not had trouble keeping water inside the shower anymore and additionally, the door looks fantastic! The clear glass really opens up the space, helping to make it feel bigger (which is so needed). If you are on the fence about getting a shower door, because a curtain works just fine, I say just do it! It totally transforms your space and it is so much easier to maintain.
Rachel Williams
Artist | Designer | Educator
Making mistakes and fixing them, so you don’t have to