What to Ask Before Hiring a Shower Door Shop

A shower door is heavy tempered glass hanging on hinges in the wettest room of your house. Done right, it's a decade-plus of trouble-free showers. Done wrong, it leaks into your walls, sags out of alignment, or fails outright. The good news: a few direct questions before you hire will tell you nearly everything. Here are the seven we'd ask — and, since we answer them ourselves every week at Baja Glass and Mirror, the answers a good shop should give.

1. Are you licensed and insured for glazing work?

In Nevada, glass and glazing work is licensed by the State Contractors Board, and any legitimate shop will hand over its license number without hesitation — you can verify it on the Board's website in about a minute. Insurance matters just as much: an uninsured installer who drops a panel or floods a wall cavity becomes your problem, not theirs. Treat any hesitation on this question as your answer.

2. Who actually does the installation?

Some outfits sell the job and subcontract the work to whoever is available that week. That's not automatically bad, but it means the person in your bathroom may not be the person whose reputation is on the invoice. Ask directly: employees or subs? At our shop, the answer is our own installers, every job — the same team that measured your opening is accountable for how the glass fits it.

3. How do you measure, and is the glass custom-fabricated?

The difference between a custom shop and a stock-door reseller shows up at this question. Walls lean and curbs slope in nearly every bathroom; a professional laser-measures the opening and fabricates glass to match it, while a stock door gets shimmed and caulked until the gaps mostly hide. Ask whether the glass is cut and tempered for your opening specifically. For a frameless shower door especially, there is no frame to hide sloppy measurement — custom fabrication isn't a luxury, it's the product.

4. What glass and hardware will you use?

You want specifics, not adjectives. Expect to hear tempered safety glass in a named thickness — 3/8" or 1/2" for frameless work — and hardware brands the shop will stand behind, in finishes you choose. If the answer is vague ("good glass, don't worry"), the materials will be whatever was cheapest that month. A shop proud of its materials will happily bore you with details.

5. What does the warranty cover — glass, hardware, and labor?

Get the warranty terms in writing and note what's covered: the glass, the hardware, and — critically — the workmanship. A leak six months in is almost always an installation issue, not a product issue, so a warranty that covers parts but not labor covers very little. Ask how warranty service works too: a local shop with its own installers can come back and fix something; a broker has to find someone willing.

6. Can I see recent local work and reviews?

Photos of the shop's own installations — not manufacturer stock imagery — and a trail of local reviews tell you what the finished work actually looks like in homes like yours. Look for volume and consistency over time rather than a perfect score with a handful of ratings. A shop that has been installing in the same city for years, under the same name, has nowhere to hide, and that's exactly what you want.

7. What happens on install day — and what does the quote include?

A professional quote is boring in the best way: measurement, fabrication, removal and disposal of the old door, installation, sealing, and cleanup, each accounted for, with no "we'll see" line items. Ask how long the install takes (a few hours for most standard doors), whether the crew protects floors and fixtures, and when the shower can get wet again (about 24 hours, while the silicone cures). Our shower door installation page walks through what that day looks like when it's done properly.

The pattern behind all seven

Every question above is really the same question: does this shop control its own work? Licensed, insured, measuring with its own people, fabricating for your opening, standing behind the result in writing. Ask all seven and you'll rarely be surprised by the answer to the eighth — how the door looks in ten years.