Add Fabric & Glass to a Desk or Coffee Table

I’m so excited about this DIY craft project because I’ve wanted to do this for quite some time and the results completely transformed the feel of my living room. Last year, I bought and painted this black coffee table white. I loved it, but it was beginning to stain (note to self: don’t paint your nails and place a wet cotton ball on a white coffee table) and I was becoming a bit neurotic about guests using coasters. Lately, I’ve been obsessed with navy blue and white stripes. I mean obsessed. I found this fabric at Wal-Mart for $2 and was determined to figure out a project that involved these stripes. The answer was hidden in plain sight-the coffee table!

Glass 101:

Glass is expensive and I wasn’t willing to spend $50 on a sheet of glass for a $7 coffee table. I waited patiently until I found a sheet just sitting at Abbey Ann’s for $5. I have no idea where it came from or what it was a part of and it was slightly longer than my coffee table, so I started to do some research on glass cutting.

Here’s the scoop about the two different types of glass and cutting it: There’s tempered glass, laminated glass and regular glass. Tempered is usually the kind you find on coffee tables, desks, refrigerators, and windshields because if it breaks it will shatter into a thousand little pieces so it won’t cut you. Most places will not cut tempered glass for you because of the way it breaks. To know if your glass is tempered, check the corner of your glass and look for a TM or the word “tempered.” There’s often a debate between laminated windows vs tempered glass but both have different properties so depending on the project, you’ll be able to decide what glass to have. Laminated glass is similar in the way that it won’t break into a thousand pieces but it’s much stronger than tempered glass, making it great for doors or windows. Non-tempered glass is what you find in most pictures frames so when it breaks, it breaks into sharp chunks and will most likely hurt you.

I called about 5 different places to find out if anyone was willing to cut my piece of glass to fit my coffee table. Everyone I showed it to assumed it was tempered although it didn’t say TM anywhere on it and refused to cut it. Finally, Portage Glass was willing to give it a shot and they cut it for $5. Turns out it wasn’t tempered and it cut nice and smooth.

You can buy glass from a local hardware or glass store, but as I mentioned before, it’s not cheap. Try flea markets, garage sales, thrift stores, and rummage sales for glass. You can even buy a very large photo frame from Target for $20 and use the glass from that instead.

Now that you know the basics on glass, on to the easy DIY: