On Sun, 17 Sep 2006 19:28:32 GMT, wrote:


"Harlan Messinger" wrote in message
...
I wrote yesterday about getting colored glass inserts cut for a dresser
top.

Why do you call them inserts if they go on the top? That's why
someone yesterday thought you were putting them in the drawers. I've
seen a coffee table that took a glass insert, but never a dresser.

If the surface of the wood which will be underneath bad? It might not
be so hard to clean it up so that it looks nice under the glass.

It was pointed out to me that custom colored glass is expensive. Next
question: can one effectively give quarter-inch sheets of clear glass a
tinted appearance by coating the underside with latex paint? Flat, glossy?
......
Personally, the idea of having any breakable material on a horizontal
surface seems silly to me.

When my parents bought my bedroom set when I was about 5, they (my
mother, that means) got glass tops for the night table and the desk.
3/16 inch I think. Beveled edges. I don't know if it was tempered
or not. I'm a good boy and never did anything that would break glass,
never dropped anything on it.

The night table because people sometimes put drinks on that, and the
desk to keep the impression of writing, etc. from making indentations
in the wood.

My brother may have lost the glass in the last 6 years, but it lasted
48 years before that with no breakage.

I think one needs to put small felt circles under the glass to keep
the glass from scraping the wood. Or maybe it keeps it from rocking??
if the wood or glass isn't perfectly flat??? Even though the desk is
four feet long I think, the glass never sagged in the middle. (I think
we only had them at the corners, but maybe also one front and back in
the middle lenghtwise.)

I sold her bedroom set 10 years ago, and the buyer took everything
out, but iirc, my mother had glass on each of her end tables, maybe
the dresser, and definitely the chest. The chest and maybe the
dresser weren't even rectangular at the top. The chest had embedded
pillars** on each side from just above the third drawer up to the top
of the 6th drawer from the bottom, which is the top. And the middles
is convex, so it must have been expensive to get the glass. That
somehow got broken at the corner 5 or 10 years before my mother died,
probably by someone other than my mother. But it still lasted 45
years. She had it taped, and it looked bad***. I should have tried
gluing it.

***It probably looked good when she first taped it, and my mother was
4 inches shorter than I, so I am not sure she could see how bad it
looked.

**I'm sure they were really half-pillars glued on and painted.

She covered her dresser, if she did, because she used it for make-up,
her nighttables for the same reason as mine, and I guess she figured
the dresser would get damaged too if it didn't have a glass top.

It really was no trouble to not break the glass.

I'd be inclined to go to the local custom cabinet
shop, and have some hardwood panels made in a matching or contrasting
finish. They can make them nice and square, and make the edges the exact
depth so they fit perfectly flush and look like they belong there. Just cut
some exact-fit cardboard templates for the pieces, and carry them in, along
with a measurement of how thick you need the edges. The edge beveling can be
on the top or bottom, whichever works with the design of the dresser.

Don't you have to bevel the top at least a little, or it will cut
people?

aem sends...