Areas we cover across London

What a London bathroom does to a shower screen job

Fitting glass in London is two problems. The first is the bathroom itself: how old it is, how square the walls are, how much room there is to swing a door. The second is getting a 45kg sheet of toughened glass from a van to that bathroom without damaging the glass, the building or the finished tiling. The second problem is the one that varies most by postcode, and it is the one that decides how we plan a job.

We work across Greater London from the workshop in Wembley and we are strongest in north, west and central London. Below is what the work is actually like in different parts of the city, because the housing stock changes the job in ways that matter when you are measuring and fitting shower screens.

Victorian and Edwardian terraces: Hackney, Walthamstow, Leyton, Tooting and Balham

The classic inner London bathroom is in the back addition: a narrow room off the half landing or at the end of the first floor, often under a sloping or lowered ceiling, frequently under two metres wide. These rooms were not bathrooms originally and it shows. Walls are lath and plaster or old soft render over brick, they lean, they bow in the middle, and the corner between the back wall and the party wall is rarely 90 degrees.

We measure these openings at three heights minimum and we record the lean, not just the width. On a two metre high opening in a Hackney or Leyton terrace it is normal to find 15 to 25mm of difference between the top and the bottom. That is well outside what a boxed enclosure can absorb, which is why so many of these bathrooms have a screen that leaks at one corner. A made to measure panel with an adjustable wall profile keeps the glass plumb and lets the profile take up the wall’s error.

Space is the other constraint. In a Tooting or Balham back addition there is often no room for an outward swinging door once the basin and the inward opening room door are accounted for, so we end up specifying an offset pivot, a bi-fold, or a fixed walk-in panel on a longer tray. Access is usually straightforward: front door, hall, up a standard staircase with a half landing. The pinch point is the stair turn, and a tall panel sometimes has to go up on edge at an angle, which is a two-person lift with the newel post protected.

Parking is the real cost in these streets. Most of Hackney, Walthamstow and Tooting is permit controlled with no side access and no driveway, so we need either a visitor permit from you or a legal place to stop long enough to unload glass safely. Glass cannot be carried a hundred metres down a terraced street in the rain while somebody watches the van. If you can sort a permit or a dropped kerb neighbour in advance, tell us at survey and we will plan the delivery around it.

Converted flats in Camden, Islington, Fulham and Kensington

Period conversions bring a specific set of problems. The bathroom in a converted flat is very often internal, carved out of a former hallway or box room with no window and only mechanical extraction. That changes our advice as much as the measurements do: a bathroom with no window and a weak extractor stays humid for hours, limescale forms faster on the glass, and silicone takes longer to cure. We will tell you to run the fan and leave the screen open, and if the extraction is clearly inadequate we will say so, because an unventilated internal shower room is hard on glass, hardware and sealant alike.

Structurally, conversion bathrooms are usually built from stud partitions rather than brick, and the quality of that studwork is a lottery. Before we hang a hinged door in a Camden or Fulham flat we want to know what is behind the tile at hinge height. If we are at survey before tiling, we ask for noggins or a plywood backing where the hinge plates will land. If the tiling is already done and there is only board behind it, we will recommend glass to glass hinges off a fixed panel, or a fixed walk-in panel, rather than fixing a 40kg door to something hollow.

Access in these buildings is the usual communal story: a shared front door, a narrow original staircase with a tight turn at each floor, and sometimes a dog leg at the entrance that is narrower than the stair itself. We measure the route at survey, not on fitting day. Panel height, panel width and the diagonal of the tightest turn all get written down, and if a panel will not go up the stairs in one piece we redesign the screen into two panels before it is made rather than discovering it on site. In parts of Kensington and Islington we are also working in conservation areas, which affects nothing about the glass itself but a great deal about where a van may legally sit.

Mansion blocks: porters, lifts and restricted working hours

Mansion blocks across Marylebone, Maida Vale, Kensington, Chelsea and the better streets of Islington are some of the most constrained jobs we do, and almost none of the constraint is in the bathroom. Many have no lift at all, and five or six flights of communal stone stairs with a cast iron balustrade. Where there is a lift it is often an original car with a folding gate, internal dimensions well under a metre, and a diagonal that will not take a two metre panel however you angle it.

So we measure the lift. Width, depth, height and door opening, plus whether the car has a removable roof hatch, because occasionally that is the only way a tall panel travels. If it will not go in the lift, it goes up the stairs, and that changes the labour, the protection and sometimes the design. A 10mm 2000mm panel carried up six flights is a genuinely heavy, awkward and risky lift, and there are blocks where we will specify two shorter panels with a horizontal joint detail rather than take that risk.

Then there is the building management. Most blocks require notice to the managing agent, proof of insurance, and work confined to specified hours, commonly 9am to 5pm on weekdays with nothing at weekends. Many require communal floors and lift interiors to be protected with boards and sheeting before anything is carried through, and some insist a porter is present. None of this is a problem if we know about it at survey. All of it is a wasted day if we find out at the front door. Tell us the building’s rules when we come out and we will deal with the agent.

1930s semis in Harrow, Pinner, Ealing, Barnet and Wembley

Interwar suburban housing is the easiest stock we work in and the most rewarding. The bathrooms are bigger, the walls are usually solid blockwork or brick and much closer to plumb, there is frequently a driveway to park on, and the stairs are wider with a kinder turn. A 1930s bathroom in Pinner or Barnet will often take a proper walk-in arrangement: a wide 10mm fixed panel, a generous tray or a wet room floor, and no door at all.

Two things still catch people out. First, many of these bathrooms have been extended over a side return or a flat roof addition, and the new section often has a timber floor with some bounce in it. A wet room former on a deflecting timber floor needs proper preparation, and a tray on a springy floor will eventually crack a silicone joint. We check the floor at survey by standing on it and watching the level, which is cruder than it sounds and tells you a lot.

Second, these houses frequently have a bathroom window right where the shower wants to be. That means notched glass around a tiled reveal or a sill, or a panel height set by the window rather than by the ceiling. Notching happens before toughening, so it has to be templated accurately, and that is another reason we come back after tiling rather than working off a plan. Access to Wembley, Ealing and Harrow from our Atlas Road workshop is short, which helps when a job needs a second visit.

New-build flats in Wembley Park, Stratford, Nine Elms and Croydon

New-build bathrooms are the one case where walls really are close to plumb and a boxed enclosure genuinely might fit. Many come with a pre-formed shower tray already installed and plasterboard or metal stud walls behind the tiling. If you are replacing a developer’s screen with something better, the good news is that the opening is probably square. The bad news is behind the tile.

Metal stud and board walls will not carry a hinged glass door on cavity fixings. Some developers fit a timber or ply pattress behind the shower wall and some do not, and there is no way to tell from the outside. We will probe carefully at survey, check the original layout for clues about where fixings were intended, and design around what we find. Very often the answer in a Nine Elms or Stratford flat is a fixed panel, or a door hung off a fixed inline panel with glass to glass hinges and a bar to the wall, because that puts the load where there is something to take it.

Pre-formed trays have their own quirk: the upstand or lip profile and the tolerance between tray and tile often means a wall channel rather than clamps, and the tray’s own fall needs checking because trays can be set slightly out when they are dropped in during a fast build programme. Access in new blocks is usually the easiest part. Lifts are large, corridors are wide and there is normally a loading bay, though many buildings insist on booking the service lift and a loading slot, and in Wembley Park and Croydon that booking can be days out. We ask about it at survey so the glass does not arrive on a day the lift is unavailable.

Loft conversion shower rooms

Loft shower rooms, whether in a Leyton terrace or an Ealing semi, are defined by the sloping ceiling. The shower sits under the slope, headroom is marginal, and the panel height is dictated by where the ceiling meets the wall rather than by anything standard. We often make a panel with a raked top edge to follow the slope, which is a shaped cut and therefore has to be exactly templated before toughening.

The second issue is the staircase. A loft conversion stair is typically the narrowest and steepest in the house, with a tight turn at the top and sometimes a restricted head height at the opening. Carrying a tall panel up it is the hardest lift in a domestic job and occasionally it simply cannot be done. We measure that stair as part of the survey, and if the panel will not go up, we design the screen to suit the stair. Nobody enjoys the alternative, which is a panel standing on the landing while everyone looks at it.

Protecting a finished bathroom

By the time we arrive, the bathroom usually represents a lot of money in tiling, a new tray, a stone floor or a basin that scratches if you look at it wrong. Glass work means drilling into tile, which means dust, and it means manoeuvring a heavy, hard object in a small room full of brittle surfaces.

So trays and baths get boarded, floors get covered, and the drilling gets done with the dust collected rather than left in the grout. We drill tile on a low speed with the right bit, because a cheap bit on a fast drill is how you crack a porcelain tile on the last millimetre. If a fixing has to land within a few millimetres of a tile edge or on top of a grout line, we will tell you before we drill and offer to move it, because tile edges are where cracks start.

The other half of protecting a bathroom is the sequence we keep going on about. Glass last. After tiling, after grouting, after the tray is set, ideally before the final clean. Measure after tiling, make the glass, fit the glass, let the silicone cure properly, then use the shower. Do it in that order anywhere in London and the job goes right. Do it out of order and you will pay for glass twice.