Dreamline Essence Double Sliding Glass Shower Doors

The Dreamline Essence double sliding door available from the home depot. See what tools you need and what you get in the box as well as some things to look out for during installation. See where you can go wrong installing this yourself and don't make the same mistakes i did. I am not a professional or affiliated with any vendor. I'm just a home owner that wanted some new shower doors. If you have any questions please comment below and I will try to answer them the best I can. If you are a professional and would like to share some tips then by all means, please comment below and help out the DIY community.

[scottsolem]

Very good job. It helps to have a self acknowledged amateur walk through it and also admitting your mistake. The toddlers voice added to the authenticity.

[victorgonzalez-pwjx]

Can you add one on how to adjust the doors please .everything you did and showed was awesome and very detailed thank you so so much I will continue and highly recommend your videos

[mram]

Great vid. Just installed mine. Coupe of things I learned. U MUST measure from bottom of the threshold! Page 16 shows a diagram to measure from the tub/tile the top of the guide bracket. It is a measurement of 71 1/8 exactly. Also, if u have wood vertical support behind your holes, u do not need anchors. Even if drilling through tile. Go right into the wood.
Tip: I did not install with silicone the first time around. I held everything on with tape just in case. Once top rail was secure, I went back and silicones everything. Hope this helps👍🏽

[biggusbestus]

I have worked in the trades for 50 years. I found your video very helpful ... There are ways to fill and relocate those holes, but looks like you have it under control. My concern is dropping the glass, which is something I have done. Yes, cleaning up 40 pounds of glass can be fun. I takes a month to find it all ...

[drewjohnson]

Great job man! Very helpful! You assisted me bigtime during my installation process. I'm also a first time installer of doors like these and you walked through the process really nicely. One addition that may be helpful to others in the future is include your summary at the beginning of the video as well as at the end. Starting from the top seems to be the way to go and I would have loved to see that early in the video as I saw other written reviews on it but it didn't compute at the time. Thanks again and great work!

[DT-uizg]

Thank you for the help, just finished installing mine and this was super helpful! Make sure you measure twice and cut once is the best piece of advice I could give. I also used NP1 sealant caulk just to ensure no leaks in the future, but all in all it's a great looking shower door.

[marklaw]

Had these doors installed by a contractor. They didn’t get the top rail level. This affects everything. Leveled the top rail and the fit on the doors improved significantly.

[Turbo_Todd]

Great video. Wish I had watched your video first. I actually installed the wall brackets 5/8" to high. I pulled them off and drilled it correctly. In my case the new holes are not visible.

[erichern]

Thanks for the tips and tricks. I just finished installing 2 of these in my restrooms. I didnt like the side metal rails so I left them off and ordered rubber strips for the glass edges from amazon. I also didn't want to drill holes on the bottom rail so i just used 3m double sided tape along with silicone. Well see how long it lasts. Thanks again for the video it made the instructions a little easier to understand.

[millylarz]

Bless you, not all heroes wear capes but you should for sure!!!🙌❤

[palllllllllll]

Thanks for the detailed vid I was intimidated by the warnings on the directions but with your help I think I can do it. I watched all the pros videos and yours is

[lillyandson]

This is a good overview video of the Essence, thanks for putting this up. I wasn't going to comment until I saw several of the comments people were making, and some of the comments were recent, so I thought I might be able to help someone by responding to some of the issues raised.

TL;DR version: Brackets should be moved but fill the holes with silicone, guides need to be screwed down (don't use glue, VHB tape, or caulk only), and every shower is different so the closer a shower matches the door specs the easier the install.

First, regarding the misplacement of the header brackets, should they be fixed so that you can install the top clips that fit in the tops of the brackets? Dreamline would say yes because they are there to prevent the header from moving upward if someone hits the underside of the header hard. Doing so will probably not pop the header out of a bracket, but it might raise one of the doors high enough that it jumps out of one of the guides for a second. If a door pops out of a guide it could come down outside the guide or on top of the guide, and possibly break the guide. Glass will only break if it hits tile (which this shower doesn't have). Also, the glass is very unlikely to jump off the header if the anti-jump knobs are installed correctly. So for this shower it might be fine, but for others it would probably be better to reposition the brackets.

The repositioning of the brackets is easy since you have wood backing. You can fill the holes with white silicone, and the bottom hole looks like it will be partly covered by the bracket, so it shouldn't be that noticeable. Since you have wood backing you don't need to strengthen the old holes when you drill the new holes close by. I personally use a white acrylic polymer filler because it dries hard and the repair is invisible (with practice), but that would be unnecessary for this situation.

Second, regarding drilling down into the curb, this is typically done for safety. Screws mechanically fasten the guides to the curb, so if someone falls against a door or panel it will have sufficient support to hold. Caulks and glues can fail, and often do fail as they age, whereas a stainless steel screw will last the lifetime of the shower door. Nearly every shower door model that has no curb extrusion requires drilling down into the curb. This is the case for almost every shower door classified as "frameless". If you search images for Frameless Shower Doors you will see thousands of enclosures with panel clamps, channels, and guides. All of these things are screwed down. Occasionally you will see a picture of a shower enclosure with no channel or clamps, only caulk. These shower doors are sometimes not up to code in their area. Someone mentioned possibly voiding the warranty for a pan liner if you drill a hole in it, regardless of where the hole is. Whether this is true for a particular pan liner manufacturer or not, a properly installed guide is not going to be a problem. The hole must be filled with 100% silicone caulk until it oozes out, caulk is placed on the bottom of the guide, and after screwing the guide in place the edges of the guide can be caulked as well, if preferred. I suspect some liner manufacturers will specify acceptable minimum placement of holes from the bottom of the pan, and curbs are typically 4" high.

Third, regarding the difficulty some people are having with this model, every shower is different and this model isn't ideal for all showers. The installation in this video looked easy, and that is likely because his curb is level and his wall outages were within the door's specs. This model does not accommodate an out of level curb (increasingly common for "frameless" sliders). If someone is having trouble installing this door, it is most likely because of an out of level curb. Most curbs are out of level by at least 1/16". It's not uncommon to see curbs 1/4" out. The reality is, an experienced installer can install these doors with out of level curbs, to a small degree. However, for a Do-It-Yourselfer following the instructions, they will run into problems if the curb is out of level. The adjustments an experienced installer can make will vary with every shower and depend on the magnitude of all outages (walls and curb), as well as the direction of outages, as well as manually calculating position of both header brackets. This is risky, and it is easy to make a calculation mistake, and it would make the instructions too complex, so Dreamline sells the door for Level Curbs only. Therefore the instructions expect this and are written only for level curbs. The placement of the header brackets are based on measuring up from the curb, but if the curb is out of level by 1/16", then the header will be out of level by that amount as well, using the method in the instructions. An out of level header has obvious problems, so headers always need to be level. Also, when checking the curb for an outage, make sure you put the level all the way up against each wall. Use shims if you have to, but you need to get the outage completely from wall to wall. If you have a 58" opening, but only a 48" level, you can't just put it in the middle. The curb can have a dip in it, or an uneven out of level condition. The guides are placed at each wall and you don't want to bottom out in a guide because the entire curb is level except for one tile.

Dreamline has a list of installers in your area that can install this door for you. I do realize that many people who are watching this video are doing so because they intend on installing this themselves, but it's still nice to have options if you think you might have a trickier shower install.

[coachingangels]

Dude, this is amazing. I'm off to install one of these next week and even though I'm very handy I was also nervous until I saw your video. Great work.

[setag]

Great video Brother & thanks for being honest & taking the time to share your knowledge on this product. It will make my installation easier as well. Peace

[rollingstoner]

I had the same problem with the 71 1/8 threshold problem, I did the same thing put some rubber shims and silicone and it work fine,

[randycaldwell]

Thank you for your video, Super helpfull !

[mattfish]

you can still bring that bracket up and drill the correct hole, fill the bad hole with silicone, the bracket will cover the bad hole.

[mariomartinez]

Thank you so much really appreciate for you tips

[jeffogden]

I just installed one of these and your video was very helpful. It’s surprising that Dreamline doesn’t have a video for it but don’t need one thanks to you. Lots of installation steps but easy enough for a DIYer. I decided not to drill into the threshold so I epoxied the little cams instead. Seems to be just fine. I really like the unit overall. How do you like yours one year later?

[JackDaddy]

Very helpful, thank you! I've fired my contractor & finishing myself, thanks to you & youtube. Maybe you (OR ANYONE) can answer a few questions:
1) My shower pan is acrylic and threshold is only 2.5". Bottom rail already cut. Will the 1/4" "over-hang" of Guide Block be a REAL issue?
2) Top Rail has notches for rollers. Do those need to be centered after cut? (i.e., if I need to shorten top rail 2", do I need to cut 1" off L & 1" off R?
3) my shower pan has a SLIGHT pitch towards drain wall, match that pitch in top rail?
Thank you!