Pinbusters – Cutting Glass and Mirrors (Without Fire)!

Have you ever wondered if the stuff people post on Pinterest is true? Well I have, and I test them all so that you don’t have to, ’cause ain’t nobody got time for that.  Click here to check out all of the pins I haven taken on. You might be surprised by some of the results!

We needed to test this pin for practical reasons, because we wanted to cut the huge mirror in the bathroom that we took down. I had originally intended to reuse the mirror by making a pretty frame for it. However, I mentioned that the buffet I bought on Craigslist that will become the vanity in the master-ish bathroom came with a very large hutch, which I love but don’t know what to do with. Since it has been sitting in our living room, staring at me and taunting me, I have spent too much time staring back and contemplating. Then one day it hit me: remove the glass in the door, replace it with mirror, and just use it as the mirror with hidden storage (ok, not very hidden, pretty obvious, but not open shelf obvious). Boom! Who has two thumbs and a giant mirror she can do anything she wants with?? You guessed it.

After spending a large portion of today in the driveway stripping the buffet down to bare wood (stripping is exhausting!), we got busy cutting mirrors (because strippers need mirrors, obviously). I purchased this necessary instrument at Home Depot:

I know my Home Depot pretty well, and I could tell you generally what is on each aisle. I figured such an obscure tool would be hard to find, though, and I was right. It was located in the tool department, with a bunch of other small miscellaneous tools, and anyone under 4 feet tall would have to be crawling down the aisle to find it. Thank goodness Doug was there to guide me.

We moved Jim (the coffee table) out of the way, and laid towels down on the big rug.

Then we brought the mirror in and laid it down.

We used the piece of glass we had removed from door to trace out our size with a permanent marker, and then we got to scoring.

We did make sure to lube the glass cutting tool with some lubricant I bought a few months ago, with delusions of improving the sliding capabilities of our impossible to move “sliding” glass doors (and which I had been procrastinating on ever since, but finally tackled! Yay me!).

That is the tiny little wheel I greased. A long piece of wood worked double duty as a scoring guide, and then we slid it underneath to snap the mirror.

The mirror did not quite break along the line as intended. It broke off at a curve on one end.

Instead of using the side of the mirror with the curved cut, we put the glass template on the other side, where the line was pretty straight, and used that side. On the second cut, we scored it a little better, and the cut was much cleaner.

It worked surprisingly well! What was more surprising was the fact that once cut, we discovered that this mirror is too thick to be used in place of the glass. We are searching around for prices on having a glass shop cut us a thinner mirror to size, so hopefully we can still follow through with our plan. As far as this glass cutting pin, though, it is totally legit (unlike the cutting wine bottles with fire one!). Happy glass and/or mirror cutting!

3 thoughts on “Pinbusters – Cutting Glass and Mirrors (Without Fire)!

  1. Pingback: A Cry For Help | Pardon Our Sawdust

  2. Thank you for showing this! I am always scared to cut the glass in my room on my own. :) I wanted to change its style. However, it is good that it turned out well! Good job!

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