Shower and Bathroom cleaning is quite easy if you clean up shortly after. But in our busy daily lives, we often put it off or procrastinate until the "results" happen. Our Houston area municipal water have pretty hard waters and unless you have a water softener, will leave a thick calcium deposit on your shower glass, and redness (from the iron) on the bottom of your shower pan, the grouts in the walls or on the caulking. Which, eventually leads to mildew that is next to impossible to clean. The calcium deposit on the shower glass can be scraped off with a razor, but, it can be quite time consuming, and it's very easy to forget and let built back up again.
We lived in our current house for about 8 years, our framed glass shower with tile backsplash came with the house, everything looked clean and peachy when the house is new. However, slowly we started having the problems that described above. We stopped in for a Home Improvement show at the Stafford Center, where one vendor was trying to convince us to switch to an Acrylic Shower (Pan / Wall). Upon setting up an appointment for a free estimate. We were floored (not the good kind) by what was quoted (it was upwards around $12k), and that's not including the glass, which we have to find separate vendors to install. That is no small amount of change and we said we'd have to think about it.... The salesperson asked us what's preventing us from signing on the dotted line right then there... Yeah, really?
We decided that we still liked our Tile backsplash, and one of our handymen agrees that it has positives more than negatives. One day, my wife came home and handed me a business card given to her by a co-worker recently had her shower door glass replaced with a frameless glass with shower guard, on there is Unique Glasswork and contact information for Ruben. We decided, that, perhaps we really just needed a new shower door glass. So we gave Ruben a call, who is flexible enough to visit us on a Saturday for an estimate.
He arrived on time, and was very thorough in taking his measurements. He was friendly, checked with us on what we wanted, answered questions we had, and made suggestions. It was a pretty professional, nicely done consultation and we waited for his quote. Days later, the quote came in, we were surprised by how much more affordable this option is and he also included a conceptual rendering of what the finished product would look like, which definitely helped us make our decision to move forward.
We paid half up front so he can order the parts. He also felt like he needed to get one more measurement just to be certain. I find that very impressive in that he wanted to make sure the job gets done right, rather than having last minute hiccups and had to postpone or delay the job. So the day of the installation came and Ruben arrived on time and started working right away. By the time he was finished, I couldn't believe we are looking at the same space. Everything was clean, crisp, elegant, and looked like we just got a brand new shower! He was thorough in his explanation that shower guard, a protective layer isn't there so we won't have to clean the glass, it just makes it easier to do. My wife came home from work and thought the same as I did, it looked amazing and we were so glad we got it done.
It felt like a different shower when we use it too and we made sure to use a squeegee every time we finished the shower to scrape off the excess water from the glass, it's very simple task and very easily done.
Ruben is definitely a very skilled artisan in what he does. What we find most impressive aside from his workmanship is his attitude, dedication, and sense of responsibility. He does a number of different type of project too, but if you need glasswork done, be sure to give Ruben of Unique Glassworks a call. read more
