Soon after we moved into this house, 20+ years ago, I replaced the shower curtain arrangement with a sliding glass door. For my money, the benefits far outweigh the minor drawback. (If your shower curtain gets all funky, you can just toss it out and get a new one.) In my early pictures for this project, that door was already removed, though you can see the caulk traces in some shots. During disassembly, some parts of the metal framework were a little grody, and I also did a bit of mechanical damage through carelessness.

It's not part of the tile project, per se, but I decided to replace the sliding glass door. I found a nice one with a brushed nickel finish for a reasonable price at Wayfair. The price was helped even more because I opted for a "like new" refurbished item, and the FedEx shipping was free. The box with everything weighs about 90 pounds, and it's been standing on my porch unopened for about a month. I was finally brave enough to cut through the massive amount of not-from-the-factory packing tape and inventory things. Even though I had refurb anxiety, all of the contents were present and undamaged. Most of the parts were still in interior factory wrapping. If this was a customer return, I don't know what they didn't like about it, though I suspect they either didn't like the looks or it wouldn't fit their opening. When I got about 90% done installing it, I found that a couple of fairly minor pieces were missing (supposed to receive 4 but only received 2). I called Wayfair to get replacements, thinking I'd have to wait a few days for them to arrive. To my surprise, their policy was that the support rep didn't have a way to send replacement parts for something that had already been returned once. Her only option was to give me a complete refund. I was able to work around the problem of the missing parts with local MacGyver technology.

Installing these things is pretty straightforward as long as you're starting with a level and plumb opening. This particular model wants two holes drilled for anchors on each side piece. Drilling into porcelain tile is something of an ordeal, and I didn't want to screw up the tiles I had just laid. I considered mounting the side pieces with construction adhesive instead of screws, but I'm not sure what would happen at some future point where the door frame has to come back out. I bought a 1/4 inch diamond bit hole saw and went to town. It took about an hour to drill the four holes with a cordless drill.

As I've mentioned before, the red areas on both sides will receive trim pieces after the walls have been painted.