THE HILL HOUSE

If you've been around here for any length of time, you already know my answer to the shower curtain v glass debate… curtains! At the Farmhouse and again at the Poplar Cottage, we’ve made the case for curtains. Because they’re cheaper, cozier, easier to DIY, and there are no water spots to squeegee every night.

But, funny story… we went with glass in Daphne's ensuite at the Hill House. Eeek! I know. But before you send help, this isn't a total reversal. Go back and read that curtain post and you see a line in there where I said that we weren’t against glass, we'd just never had a layout where it made more sense. Well, this is that layout.

Garrett installing a frameless glass shower panel himself in a white tiled bathroom

vanity, knobs, faucet, paneling, brass shower set, tile, epoxy grout, skylight, glass (see below)

Why This Room Broke the Streak

Daphne's ensuite is carved out of a slice of the old upstairs bathroom and an awkward closet. The space is small, but it's full of natural light, a skylight in the sloped ceiling, and a large vertical window right next to the tub. Most of the footprint is taken up by a ‘wet room’ that houses both the tub and the walk-in shower.

How to contain the wet in that room turned out to be the hardest part of this whole bathroom.

We talked about a full steel system with glazing and a door, but that was out of budget and awkward with the window anyway. So a long rod and curtain it was. The rod would have run the whole length of the curb, shower to tub, closing off the entire wet zone when drawn.

Here's where it fell apart. That curtain's path runs straight into the window. A rod following the curb would have had to either mount into the window glazing itself or run above it, which meant the curtain would land mid-window. Not great aesthetically. But honestly, we probably could have called it old house quirky and lived with it ;)

Clawfoot tub beside a tall bathroom window with a brass cafe curtain rod

But the curtain got even more awkward when we considered the cafe curtain. The bathroom’s tall window faces the street, so it was always going to get its own 3/4+ height curtain for privacy. Picture that: a little cafe curtain on the window, and a second, much bigger shower curtain running perpendicular and butting into it, like so…

Diagram comparing where a shower curtain rod and a cafe curtain would both fall at the same window

A bit awkward for sure.

But there was a practical issue too. A rod and curtain take up a few extra inches when you factor in the gathered fabric, and the sloped ceiling only leaves so much horizontal room to place a shower head in the first place. Whoever was showering would have been bumping the curtain with an elbow the whole time they washed their hair. Glass doesn't need that buffer. Mounted right at the outside edge of the curb, a fixed panel gave us a few additional inches of much-needed space.

And once we looked at it honestly, the only spot that really needed a barrier at all was around the shower itself, not the tub. So we really only needed a short section of glass separating the shower from the vanity. No custom steel enclosure. No long rod and curtain running down to the tub. That felt doable.

Brass rain shower head and handheld shower against white tile next to a glass panel

Glass, in other words, didn't replace a curtain here so much as let us skip the whole rod-and-window puzzle. So for the first time in any of our old homes, we added shower glass. And it turns out this was the one thing in this whole renovation that surprised us with how easy it was.

We Bought It on Wayfair and Installed It Ourselves in an Afternoon

I want to be very clear about how low-key this project was, because ‘shower glass’ tends to summon images of a contractor, a template visit, a six-week lead time, and a bill with several zeros on it. That's probably true for a fully custom enclosure. It was definitely not true for us.

We ordered a fixed frameless panel through Wayfair, sized to our exact opening for $350 (it’s down to $260 right now). This is the part that made the whole thing possible: panels like our’s come in a wide enough range of fixed sizes that you can get remarkably close to a custom fit without paying custom-glass-company pricing. We’re talking down to the .5inch. Definitely close enough that we didn't need to fudge anything.

Psst: if you're ordering glass, measure to your finished tile, not the framing. Backer board and tile eat close to an inch per wall, and a panel sized to the wrong number isn't going back. That one's on our two-page measurements card, along with every other bathroom number you'll need for a renovation. It's free and you can get it here…

The glass arrived 4 days after we ordered it and showed up well packaged. We mounted the brackets, set the panel, and were done in an afternoon. No template visit. No specialty installer. Garrett and I will tell you it was one of the least stressful parts of this entire bathroom!

Close-up of a glass shower panel clip being installed on a marble curb

Frameless glass shower panel with brass fixtures in a white bathroom with a skylight

White bathroom wet room with a clawfoot tub, frameless glass shower, and skylight

Does This Mean We're Team Glass Now?

No, and I don't think we’ve betrayed the curtain camp, it's just further proof that the "right" answer depends entirely on the room.

The maintenance reality we always warned you about with glass is still coming: it will need a squeegee pass occasionally or it'll spot, and we're testing whether that becomes an actual daily habit or an aspirational one. Ask us in six months. But for a room with a sloped ceiling and not an inch to spare, glass solved a problem a curtain rod genuinely couldn't, and for that specific job, it was the right call.

If you're staring down a similarly awkward, sloped, or tight bathroom and wondering whether glass or a curtain is the move, our honest answer hasn't really changed: start with what the room's geometry is telling you, not with a default preference. We defaulted to curtains for years because most of our bathrooms have had normal rectangular walls to hang one from. And I really do love the warmth a curtain brings to a space. But sometimes, glass is the right answer.

Have you ever had a room talk you out of your usual preference? I'd love to hear it! Misery loves company and all that ;)

xx

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