We cut the glass, we fit the screen

A glass workshop in Wembley, not a reseller with a van

London Shower Screens makes the glass it fits. Our workshop at 6 Atlas Road in Wembley cuts, edges, polishes, drills, notches, toughens and laminates glass, and makes up sealed units. We are not buying boxed enclosures from a wholesaler and marking them up, and we are not sending your dimensions to a processor in another county and hoping for the best.

The practical difference shows up in the awkward jobs. A panel that has to be notched around a tiled upstand, a door that needs its hinge cut-outs in an unusual position because the wall only has timber in one place, a replacement panel for a discontinued enclosure, a 10mm walk-in screen with a machined bar fitting. Those are ordinary days for a workshop and a problem for a reseller. It also means that when a job has to move quickly, the only queue we are standing in is our own.

It cuts both ways and we will be plain about it. Because we make to order, we cannot do same-day glass, and because toughened glass cannot be altered after the furnace, we will not cut a panel from measurements someone has given us over the phone. Those two things are not us being difficult. They are the physics of the material.

Our own fitters, not subcontractors

The people who fit your screen are employed by us. That matters for one reason above all others: accountability. When the surveyor, the workshop and the fitting team are the same company, nobody gets to blame anybody else. If the glass is wrong, it is our error and we remake it. If the silicone detail is wrong, the person who did it answers to the same manager as the person who measured.

It also makes the handover between survey and fit less lossy. The notes from the survey, the photographs of the stud positions, the record of which way the floor falls and which corner is out of plumb all stay inside one business. We have lost count of the number of jobs we have been called into where the measure was done by one firm, the glass made by another and the fitting given to whoever was free that week, and the result is a screen that nobody will own.

How a job actually runs

A free site survey across London comes first. We would rather do two visits than one: an early one while the walls are open to agree layout, door swing, hinge positions and what needs blocking out behind the tiles, and a final templating visit after the tiling is finished and the tray or wet room floor is set. The early visit is where we earn our keep, because almost every expensive mistake in a shower screen is made before the tiler arrives.

After templating you get a written fixed quotation. Fixed means fixed: the glass thickness, the toughening standard, the easy-clean coating if you want it, the hardware finish, the number of panels, the support bar if one is needed, and the work we are and are not doing. Then the glass is made in Wembley and our team fits it, normally in a single visit for a straightforward screen.

On fitting day we need the bathroom empty and accessible, water available, and a clear route for the panel. We bring our own protection for floors and baths, we bring a vacuum, and we leave the silicone to cure properly rather than letting you use the shower that evening. Twenty-four hours is the honest answer for a sanitary silicone in a cool London bathroom, and rushing it is how a bead fails in its first month.

What we will not do

We do not tank bathrooms, tile, plumb or build floor formers. We work on finished, waterproofed, tiled surfaces, and we are responsible for the glass, the hardware, the fixings and the sealing of them. If the tanking behind your tiles has failed, that is not something a screen can fix and we will not pretend otherwise.

We will not fix a heavy hinged door into plasterboard with no timber behind it. We will not make glass from measurements we have not taken. We will not quote a frameless screen for an opening we have not seen, and we will not fit a wide panel with no support bar simply because it looks better, if we expect it to move. We would rather have an uncomfortable conversation at survey stage than a warranty argument a year later.

We also will not sell you more than the job needs. If 8mm does your bathroom, we will specify 8mm. If a semi-framed enclosure is the sensible answer for a rental flat in Croydon, we will say so, even though there is less in it for us. If your existing screen is fundamentally fine and the problem is a failed bead and a limescaled hinge, we will tell you to clean it and reseal it rather than replace it.

Standards, safety glass and the paperwork

Glass in and around a shower is a critical location under Approved Document K, so it has to be safety glass. Our shower glass is toughened to BS EN 12150 and meets the impact classification of BS 6206 Class A, and every panel carries the permanent mark that identifies the processor and the standard it was made to. Where we laminate, that work is to BS EN 14449. Where a glass screen is doing a barrier job next to a level change, the loading requirements of BS 6180 apply and the fixings get designed accordingly rather than guessed at.

We are a FENSA registered installer. For shower screens that is not a regulatory requirement in the way it is for replacement windows, but it tells you something about how the business is set up: registered, audited, insured, and used to working to a documented standard rather than to habit. If you want the glass specification in writing before you commit, ask for it. It should already be on the quotation.

Expect to be told, in writing, the thickness and standard of the glass, whether it is coated, the finish of the hardware, whether a support bar is included, what preparation is assumed to have been done by others, and what the cure time is before the shower can be used. A quotation that gives you a single figure and the word frameless is not a specification.

Hardware finishes, and the one that will disappoint you

We supply chrome, brushed nickel, matt black and brushed brass hinges, clamps, profiles, bars and handles. Chrome is the default for a reason: it is the most forgiving in hard water, because limescale on a bright chromed surface wipes off and does not show much in the meantime. Brushed finishes hide fingerprints better and hold water in the grain slightly longer. Matt black looks superb in photographs and shows every single water spot in a hard water area, which is most of London. Brushed brass sits in between and ages more visibly.

None of that is a reason to avoid them. It is a reason to know what you are choosing. If you want matt black hardware in a Tooting bathroom with chalky water, have it, and keep a cloth in the room. If the thought of wiping hardware every few days irritates you, chrome will make you happier for the next fifteen years.

How we price, and why we do not publish a price list

A frameless screen is priced on the glass area, the thickness, the coating, the hardware, the number and type of panels, how much machining the glass needs, and access. Access is the variable people forget. A 10mm panel to a second floor flat with a communal staircase and a shared door is a different job from the same panel into a ground floor bathroom in a Harrow semi, and pretending otherwise just means the quote changes later.

So we survey, then we quote a fixed figure in writing, and that figure does not move unless you change what you have asked for or we find something behind the tiles that neither of us could see. We will not give you a square metre rate on the phone and call it a quote. If another company has, ask them what they have assumed about your walls, your tray falls and getting the glass up your stairs, because they have assumed something.

We cover Greater London from the Wembley workshop, strongest across north, west and central London, Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm. If you want a straight answer about whether your bathroom needs a bespoke frameless screen or whether a boxed enclosure will do, phone 020 4634 6045 and ask. We give that answer for free and we give it honestly, because the jobs that go wrong cost us more than the jobs we turn down.