Breaking Glass

I've been trying to dispose of the debris from the kitchen remodel with as little material as possible going to the landfill (or wherever garbage goes here - I really have no idea). I've been able to give away most of the stuff (old cabinets, the pallet on which the the new cabinets were delivered, etc.) on craigslist and freecycle.

The old double door that I removed was rotten and no one wanted it. I figured I'd remove the dual-pane glass cartridges from the doors and someone might want them to build into new doors. But when I was trying to remove one of them I broke one of the dual panes. It was pretty cool, because I stressed it and cracked it. The fracture spread very slowly. I was able to go in the house and get the girls so they could watch and listen to the pane slowly fracture all the way and then, with a tap, collapse into a pile of "diamonds".

But that left me with a cartridge with one intact pane and a bunch of rough broken glass around the frame. Nobody wants to handle that. In order to dispose of what was left I needed to break the second pane. That sounded like a great thing to let Audrey do. I set her up with safety glasses and a hammer and told her to start swinging!

She didn't like the loud noise of the hammer blows, and she thought the glass would be even louder when it broke. So I added ear protection. Two blows later and the job was done. Both Audrey and Charlotte thought it was pretty cool.