When you own a home it’s really fun and exciting to take on huge projects and renovations, but most of home ownership means fixing small annoying things that break and taking care of general upkeep. (A boring yet necessary evil.)
Take our guest bath for example:
See those shower doors? Well, they swing back and forth the wrong direction and fall off their tracks. Not cool. (Well, aside from them being gold and hideous, but that’s a bigger fish to fry, so for now I am doing basic upkeep.)
The reason for the swinging? The little plastic guide at the base of the doors that keep the doors from swinging is broken.
The solution? Replace the little guide. New guide equals no more door swing. I headed to our local hardware store and picked up this Tub and Shower Door Bottom Guide for a couple bucks (here’s the same one on Amazon):
Step one – remove the old broken door guide. It was very straightforward. I just unscrewed it with a phillips head screwdriver.
Step two – add Command Strips to the back of the new shower guides. I originally used the foam squares provided but they were total garbage. Just skip that useless step and go straight for the Command Strips. You are welcome.
Once the strips are applied, cut the pull tabs off. You don’t need them.
Step three – stick the new guides where the old one used to be. I used both guides side-by-side.
Here’s how they look from outside the shower. Not noticeable at all.
I did this update a few months ago. They are still going strong. My daughter uses this shower daily and the shower guides have not budged.
So easy! Of course, I’d love to just replace the shower doors and tray completely for a beautiful custom tile one, but my budget doesn’t allow for that right now. Keeping up with these small fixes is necessary to keep your home running smoothly.
Thanks for reading! Have a wonderful weekend!
Here’s another post about this bathroom.
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Lawrence Barnett says
My wife and I have been staring at some various options for our bathroom, and we were interested in how you would select the right shower door. I like the look of the sliding doors because they save you more space! Though we don’t have much space, to begin with, it would be nice to have the option. By the way, thanks for your excellent post.
Allison says
Our house came with these doors, I didn’t select them. I only repaired them.
Joe says
Thank you so much. It seems nobody else in the world had the exact shower as us. Minus the gold. And the exact same guide. Mine broke when my four year old was playing and pulling on the doors. Luckily, she didn’t get hurt. Now I know what to do, and where to get the same hard to find guides that I need. Woo hoo!!!!
Joan Collins says
That area gets “scummy”, did that also happen?
Matt says
The only additional step I would do to what you did is lay some clear sealant or caulk down to either side of the new guides and along the front to keep water from eventually making its way to the command strips and causing then to give way over time. Otherwise, awesome job!
Carol says
I have a similar problem. I put my old shower doors in a new track. The new track only has the front side raised to hold the first door. The back side of the track is flat, so the second door swings inward. I believe I can use the product you did (probably cut in half) for the one track. Will try it and see. Thank you for the idea to fix my problem.
Command strips will not hold on the bottom rail they will come on glued. says
Command strips will not hold on the bottom rail. They will come unglued