So how does a person keep busy, when their stained glass studio space has been taken over by another project?? And what in the world was I supposed to do with the enormous amounts of scrap glass being generated when I was working??
Behold the perfect storm. Daughter was working her designer magic for a friend who has also moved to the Dallas area recently. The friend had bought a house in need of a dramatic makeover, and my girl is just the one for the job. We are talking Major Renovation here. Taken-down-to-the-studs-and-completely-reconfiguring-the-floorplan renovation. She was juggling this project along with the church for months, and when it came time to choose material for the backsplash, budget had become a major issue. Um, doesn't it always become a major issue??
I heard many conversations between Daughter and her friend concerning the backsplash. They both had their hearts set on glass mosaic, but every source was quoting between $200 and $300 a square foot for what they had in mind!! Even the designer prices were between $150-$180. Ack!
So I'm thinking,"Hellooo... I'm up to my proverbial eyeballs in glass here!" (Apparently, I will NEVER learn my lesson!) But I have grown up with a serious aversion to throwing things away, things that could be useful in some other way. It's the creative side of me, thinking that everything can have a new life with some ingenuity. So I had been dutifully stashing the sizeable "scraps" from the stained glass windows. Most of it was original glass; 90 year old pieces that were broken and had to be replaced. Heaven knows I have piles of that! And some of it was new, bought to cut replacement pieces for more than one hundred windows. The windows I am working on are fairly large, the individual pieces are fairly large, and that always creates an abundance of "scrap". And the real bit of kismet here is that all of the glass colors they were looking for were ones that I had.
This situation was a win-win. Since all we needed were tiny glass "tiles" that measured 3/4" x 4", the scrap would yield tons of that.
The total backsplash area in this kitchen is approximately 25 square feet, and required 1,200 pieces of glass. It took me about 20 hours to cut it all, and boy was my back killing me when I finished! Talk about your repetitive motion...wow.
And I must give a shout-out to our tile guy, Javier, and his helper. They installed these pieces of glass one by one, creating the pattern as they went, with nary a complaint. My experience with tile setters is that they usually complain bitterly about mosaic installation, even though it usually comes pre-set on mesh in 12" x 12" squares. And you can see they did a great job.
Speaking of recycling, the homeowner here is definitely of an opposite mind than me on this subject. In a fit of "cleaning up" the jobsite here one day, she threw all of the drawers in the dumpster. What the?? If memory serves, a couple of ceiling fans met the same fate. And an ice machine. Sigh. I console myself with the fact that surely one of the workers fished all of it out and took it home. Needless to say, her husband was not happy when he had to replace everything!
The new drawers have arrived, but the finisher has not been back to stain the fronts yet. Pretty, no?
And the scraps from this project? Yeah, I saved them. I have a major mosaic project planned...that might be my next endeavor won't happen anytime soon...