Wednesday, September 22, 2010

The shower doors have got to go!


When I purchased my townhouse there were a few decor elements that I wouldn't have necessarily chosen, one of which was glass doors in the bathroom showers.  I'm sure a lot of people love these things, I am not one of them.

Ick!

Of the past two owners, I don't think anyone wanted to take on the task of removing the shower doors in the bathrooms.  Maybe they thought it was going to be a more intensive task than it was.  All I know is, the doors were absolutely hideous and they had to go!

I did some research online and most posts assured me that the removal shouldn't be too bad or take too long, unless the doors were installed incorrectly.  So, I crossed my fingers and went for it.   I figured that if I ruined the tub, I'd just get a new one since I want to do some additional work to the master bath anyway.

I started the demolition at 10PM one evening; I just couldn't stand the the doors anymore! After finagling with one of the doors, I was able to lift it off of the top rail and remove it completely.  The other door, however, was attached to the bottom rail with two screws.  After fighting them for a little while, I was able to free that door as well. Next, I popped the top rail off (by far the easiest part!) and started to remove the six screws (3 on each) that held the side rails in place.  The side and bottom rails were unfortunately attached to the tub with latex caulking.  After a good bit of slicing with a razor blade and prying with a caulk remover tool, I was able to remove all of the rails.  Unfortunately, they left behind a lot of the caulking, which wasn't the easiest to remove. At first I thought the bottom rail had completely destroyed the tub because of the black patch I found that appeared to get worse as I scrubbed at it.  I did find out by accident that rubbing alcohol breaks the caulk down, so the spot came up with ease, thank goodness! Once the caulking was all cleaned up, I was able to cap off the holes that remained in the tub wall from the screws.  Job mostly done!

Add a shower rod and curtain and presto!
Note: Bathroom makeover still in progess!

 The guest bathroom's shower wasn't used nearly as much as the master one, so it was a lot easier to clean up.  I'm so glad I don't have any icky shower doors that are impossible to fully clean anymore!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I should digg your post so more folks can look at it, very helpful, I had a hard time finding the results searching on the web, thanks.

- Norman

Shower Doors said...
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