Removing a Sliding Shower Door {My New Year’s Eve Fun!}

 

Our home has two full bathrooms in it right now.

When we moved in, both of the showers had sliding glass doors.  I do not like sliding glass doors, especially cleaning them.

I believe we took the boys’ shower door down the week we moved in, but the one in my and Cy’s bathroom has stayed.

Partly because I knew we would be tearing it down once we built our new master bath in the addition.

But like I said, I do not like sliding shower doors.  It makes me feel all Closter phobic when I am taking a shower.  And they get all gross and dirty in the sliding trays.  Ugh!

Plus, our shower doors had a mirror on one half.  Not cool.

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Who really wants to see themselves as they sit on the toilet?  Not me!!

So on New Year’s Eve day, I had had enough!

I KNOW that we are going to be gutting this bathroom in the next couple of months, but I couldn’t take it any longer!!

First I took the doors off their tracks…

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There is our lovely window in the shower.  Aaaah, gorgeous, right?  {insert sarcastic look}

After removing the doors, I just  needed to unscrew the frame from the wall.

There were several screws in each side to be removed.

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Once I took the screws out, I just had to pull the frame off the wall.  This was a little hard in places, so I used a box knife to help scored the caulk.

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Then I yanked, and pulled, and pulled, and yanked.

I had to get Cy to help me with one part that just wouldn’t come off, but we finally did it!

Much better already!!

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After removing the frame, you will be left with some caulk on the tile which can easily be removed with a blade.

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See the little red plastic thingy where the screw used to be?  I just left mine there because we will be tearing this whole shower down soon.

But if we weren’t, I would remove that red thing (I know it has a name, but it escapes me.) and fill it up with a little white bathroom caulk.  You’d never notice it!

Since I didn’t want to spend any money on this bathroom (that will be non-existent in a couple months), I just bought a tan shower curtain from Lowe’s. 

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Didn’t even iron it, girls!  And it doesn’t bother me one bit!

It looks pinkish in this picture, but it isn’t. 

I love it so much better than the sliding shower doors, that I am lovin’ life when I take a shower now!

It took me about 30 minutes to take down that shower door.  So, so easy!

 

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Eventually, this room will just have the toilet in it, the door entry will be walled up, and the window will lead into our new master bath!

I cannot wait!!

 

Here’s the winner of the

Thirty-One Thermal Tote giveaway!

VJ Kloosterman

Congratulations!!  I will be contacting you soon.

If you didn’t win, but still want one of these adorable totes, the special runs through January 31st!

Just click on the picture to visit Crystal’s webpage to order.

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34 Comments

  1. ugh! I hate shower doors, too!! And I, too, have a window in my shower, but we chose to leave it when we remodeled because taking it out presented too many problems. It does have frosted glass in it and I love the natural light it lets into the bathroom. However, it does seem like an odd choice!

  2. So much better! We removed a glass shower stall door. I’m so glad we did! Although on some HGTV shows you see them installing glass shower walls now. In 20 years people will be ripping those out, too.

  3. Guh…. we have a window in our shower too! So weird! Who thought that was a good idea?! We rent though, so can’t go boarding it up or knocking walls down to make the bathroom bigger or any of that. After living there 3 years, the frame is now moldy… obviously the landlord just would paint over the new mold every time they re-rented it. I have a plan though to get rid of the mold & seal it then cover the window in order to hopefully protect it a little better. Excited about that :)

  4. So, did you have any rust issues where the door rails were? We have shower doors in our main bathroom (which is mine) and they’ve probably been there 50 years. My husband is worried that there will be rust stains on the tile or tub. I don’t really care – I just want them GONE!!!!! :D

  5. Great job. And I too have a window in my shower (it’s frosted) and horrible sliding glass doors. But I live in a NYC studio and it is one of my four windows. Which for NYC studios is a lot!

  6. I did the same thing to my shower over a year ago. We plan to gut ours too someday, but not in the next few months ;) I’m talking a few years in the future!

    Still, I was glad to have those doors GONE.

  7. Traci

    Girl, I feel your pain about those shower doors. I have a separate shower from tub area and HATE it. One of these days… gonna redo the who stinkin thing. Talk about groddy, it is soo hard to clean too.

    Yours already looks tons better with a shower curtain. Can’t wait to see you start on this project. Did you get my email about the your kitchen and Southern Living???

    Marilyn C.

  8. I don’t know Traci, you could do some serious multi-tasking with a mirror right there next to the commode! Can’t wait to see this next project!

  9. I’m so glad to find someone else who hates shower doors. Every house we’ve had those doors in, I’ve taken them out and been so much happier! I even took the shower door off our shower in our room and replaced it with a fabric shower curtain. The only problem is I hit the door just right and it broke into a million tiny pieces. I’m still cleaning up that glass but I’m still happy I don’t have those doors! Oh, the things that make us happy!

  10. I used to have a window in on the shower wall in a house I rented in college. The steam from the shower would always create these annoying streaks on the window. Even though it obviously had a shade, I am a stickler for clean windows. I would raise the shade and clean the window every time the shower was used. I finally gave up and just let it be. So glad I don’t live there anymore! :-)

  11. When my boys were little like yours, the tub/shower in that house was also right next to the toilet. I had to wash that shower curtain constantly. I joked about painting a bulls-eye target inside the toilet bowl.

  12. Major improvement! I never iron the shower curtain right out of the package – steam from the shower will do that over time. Hard to believe what a change your half-hour of labor made to the appearance of the room! Kudos!!!

  13. Nice to see a ‘real’ bathroom!!! Anyway, looks great but I| can’t believe that the labour was only an hour!!I like to take a bath and close the shower doors to keep the heat in :-)

  14. I hate those doors too- the tracks never come clean!
    Good to know how easy it is to take them down- I’ll keep that in mind for when we buy a house!

  15. Traci,
    looks like you are not alone on disliking shower doors. When we lived in PA we had a bathroom with gray fixtures in it…yep, including the tub. Tiles half way up the wall were gray too. EWWW! It also had those hideous sliding doors and I couldn’t stand cleaning that bathroom because like you and everyone else it would never come completely cleaned. I had him take the doors out and put up a shower curtain. So much nicer. We had plans to redo that bathroom,but other DIY projects took precedence and then ultimately we moved. Looking forward to seeing what you have in mind for a new master bath.

  16. oh yeah, almost forgot…those “thingies” : ) aren’t they called drywall anchors or molly’s? I think they are those plastic things that pop open in the wall when there isn’t a stud.

  17. Luckily I’ve never lived with those grody sliders. But the house I grew up in had a window (with privacy glass, so no need for a curtain) in the shower. Now that I think of it, so did my first house! (same builder) When we went house hunting last time, Mom kept asking why the newer homes don’t have a window in the shower ;-)

  18. I know it’s temporary, but the shower curtain looks so much better than the shower doors…cleaner too. I always think that style of shower doors make a bathroom look dirty.

  19. We are hoping to build an additional master bed and bath, too. I’m excited to see your upcoming progress!

    I always thought showers that had windows in them were because people converted them from a bathtub only (like in older houses before they had showers). Sounds like my theory may be wrong though. Who would’ve thought?!

  20. Traci, thank you so much for posting this! In the middle of the night on Thursday our glass shower door spontaneously shattered. It sounded like some one shot out our window with a shot gun, but no it was just that the glass shattered on it’s own. So the next day we cleaned it up and thanks to your post I knew how to take down the frame, it looks so much better now anyways and much easier to clean!!

  21. We have doors on our two showers and I CAN’T get the hard water stains off that came with buying. I like the idea of getting rid of them entirely! Regarding the window, I’ve had showers both with and without. The one thing I like about most bathroom windows is when they are frosted! Gets the light in without having any privacy issues.

  22. Traci~
    I too dislike sliding glass shower doors.
    Mostly because of the yukky tracks being so hard to clean.
    At least when shower curtains get nasty, they can be washed.
    or disposed of for a new one.
    I always used a clear liner for more light.
    Just pulled the pretty top curtain aside..
    about windows in the shower..
    I think that is because a builder did not have to install a ceiling exhaust fan if a window was in the room!
    am enjoying this series on adding “charm” and “character” to your home..
    have a wonderful day..
    Hugs..
    Loui♥

  23. Um, Traci? I want to know how you can be a true DIYer with such beautifully manicured nails. I was once accused of having “man” hands in a photo. My nails only look as good as yours once a year at Christmas (to impress the in-laws, of course).

  24. red thing= anchor.

    I have several in my shower area from MULTIPLE handicap bars from the previous owner… It’s a pain, but popping them out and filling with caulk is an easy solution until I too demo my bathroom.. Ah….one day.

  25. Sometimes getting rid of or changing one really annoying thing can make the wait for a bigger project more bearable. I don’t like the tiles we chose for our kitchen 13 years ago, but we can’t afford hardwood right now so I added the board and batten on the wall and soffit to really brighten up the kitchen. I can live with the floor now and love my kitchen all over again.

  26. This looks just like my bathroom! Even the horrible tile is the same! One of the first things I did when we moved in was to tear out the sliding tub doors too. I could not get the red anchors out though! (Maybe I should just try to cover them with the caulk). Anyway, it’s nice to know I’m not alone in having an icky old bathroom! Thanks for the post!

  27. It seems like your architecture was not so much familiar with the bathroom designing. That’s why he made this kind of mistakes. But it’s looking quite better after you put curtains at the place of shower door.

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