The Happy Badger: Observations of a Suburban Curb-Shopper: We're Playing With Broken Glass!

My husband--the Mountain Man, The Prince of the Forest--is the best ally this Happy Badger could desire.

That's my thesis. Here's some proof.

One hot June night, an apartment building that I pass by on my way to a local grocery store had this unusual, broke-down chair on the trash pile. At a glance, I could see that it was older than my octogenarian father.

I had to have it. But I didn't want to fix it to be a chair again.

I tore the thing to pieces that night, only keeping the chair back intact.

Then, I put the Mountain Man to work. Out came his favorite saw horses, which we found in the basement when we bought the place 13 years ago. He tidily sawed the legs off so that only the back above the seat line remained.

My goal: make this old chair back into a mirror and jewelry rack. Can you see what I saw in it?

Months passed. I looked up mirror-cutting on wikiHow, then I debated with myself. Should I pay Jimmy Donovan, our fine local glass cutter to cut two smaller mirrors out of a cracked wardrobe mirror I found in Pleasantville? (gosh, I just love Pleasantville's trash....) Should I take a shot at cutting a mirror by myself? More to the point, could I somehow convince The Man to do it for me?

Turns out the cliche is true: You just don't know until you ask. He was totally game.

First, we had to free the mirror from the frame. Usually, I grouse about non-trash "Trash" that I see weekly, but the people who threw this mirror out deserve praise. They had done multiple repairs before giving up, leaving eras of hot glue to cut through. I was glad I needed to salvage only two 12" x 5" pieces from this long mirror because I broke it in two more spots before I managed to pull off the last piece of framing.

I did, in fact, use the carbide steel glass cutter, just like the pros use, only I did it badly. My fantasies of making a stained-glass window are officially on hold.

Steel Wheel, Traditional Cast, Straight End Glass Cutter

I busted up still more usable mirror until I got one decent piece. Then, I handed the task over to The Man.

Even with my husband's strong and steady hand, we made one serious mistake. (Don't worry--it doesn't involve blood or releasing my fingernails from their fleshy moorings.) We used a square dowel instead of a round one to crack off the scored pieces. Ugh. No kidding, don't make the same mistake. Turns out that square dowels under the glass make lots of curved, triangularish shards on the scored edge.

Finally, we had two mirrors of the right size, more or less, but horribly jagged. The chair back offered no grooves to hide these edges.

Just as despair was setting in, The Man proved his noble, princely nature again by pulling out an electrical grinder and an extension cord and confidently declaring, "Let's take this project outside!"

As I directed a steady stream of water on the edge of the whirring grinder, I asked, "Isn't this how people die of electrocution?"

My Man laughed like the experimenting kid he used to be: "No. We're grounded anyway. C'mon, how can you not have fun? We're playing with broken glass!"

Wordsworth said it best: "The Child is father of the Man."

And, to my enormous relief, the grinding sort of worked. With the help of our handy hot-glue gun, we attached the pieces to the chair back/mirror frame. The goo disguises the rough edges pretty well.

Next time, I'll probably leave this work to the pros, like Jimmy Donovan,

but I'm really proud of our teamwork.

The Final Touches!

I added five brass screw-in hooks that I picked up when Christ Church cast off a bunch of stuff from their basement, plus two brass knobs that I claimed from an otherwise unredeemable curbed dresser in Sleepy Hollow village.