apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

A bit too high-concept for my taste.

That's a little too much like walking outside to find someone smashed all the car windows in the neighborhood. Deja vu, and not in a good way.

Kind of neat but not very nice for the environment, I would think. If it's really sanded down, fine, but if there are any sharp edges, it seems mean for animals and birds that might stroll through.

What happens when the wind blows shards of this down the block into the yard of the neighbors who have kids?

silly beavers.

What makes this worse than gravel or the colored glass "gravel" you see advertised? It's just a little sillier and fancier looking. And I doubt it'll blow around much more than gravel would. Birds and small animals walk on rocks all the time, and stephanie does specify that all the sharp edges seem to have been sanded down.

Seem to have didn't convince me that they had. Did she scoop up a handful?

what about the fact that gravel, being a rock, is relatively natural, but glass is man-made? i love creative concepts, but this strikes me a little bit like having a lot of what will essentially, eventually, become litter on the ground. what if you want to remove it? how do you separate all the glass from the earth that's going to get mixed into it? unlike the tiny piece of gravel that you couldn't get up with your shovel or rake, it's not something you can just leave there.

on the other hand, i think i've seen something like this laid down over TPO roofing on an inaccessible outdoor space on a tall building...like at the end of a glazed corridor there's a three foot ledge you can see but not get to? i'm pretty sure i've seen this material contained in a shallow pan on a ledge like that - kind of an icy modern zen garden. in that instance, it's contained and it's finite, making it easy to remove. in which case i'm cool with it, and think it's kind of fun.

Anne, have you ever stepped on gravel? Have you ever stepped on a large shard of glass?

For the sake of your nervous system, I hope you felt a difference there.

Not buying the "sharp edges sanded down" thing -- unless that's not a picture of the finished product. Because I see lots of sharp edges.

The only currently affordable way to "sand" the edges of large quantities of broken glass is to tumble it. Tumbling usually squares things off a bit, so I'm really surprised to see all those triangular shards in the photo.

There's a shop in Half Moon Bay that has wheelbarrows full of colored glass shards -- they may use some of it as groundcover, but I don't remember -- and they post warnings about NOT running your hands through the glass shards.

Wende - I was just thinking of that shop in Half Moon Bay. They mainly use broken tiles as their ground cover - for a very large outdoor area - but there is one area that has glass on the ground. They sell a lot of garden items so it's actually quite charming. At least in that setting it's charming.

In that setting, it's totally cool in a "don't go barefoot" way. Their cat seems to survive the groundcover, but I've always assumed the cat was smarter than I.

They did look beautiful in the sunshine, but I was one of the folks with a very curious 2.5-year-old toddler with me and yes, he thought they looked so lovely he wanted to pick up every single shard. And no, they most definitely were *NOT* all sanded down, not by any stretch. We had to leave the prefab area much faster than I would have liked, given that was the main thing I was there to see (unfortunately we missed all the interesting speakers).
It was kind of a total bummer, actually.

Pretty to look at, but I agree not very practical. I'd like the idea better if they tumbled all the shards so they were like sea glass (i.e. no sharp edges).

"Sanded down" doesn't mean a thing when those shards can still be split in smaller and smaller pieces. If you want to integrate glass shards into something, do what Whole Foods Potrero Hill (San Francisco) did with its bistro counters. And no, I wouldn't let my kid or nieces and nephews plan on such a groundcover. Ridiculous.

I've also been to that shop in Half Moon Bay and I have a hard time seeing this glass being a ton safer. I'll pass.

Use tempered glass ("safety glass") shards instead; they're conveniently pre-squared-off.

Note: if you break a large sheet of safety glass it tends to continue breaking for some time. It's sort of weird, actually. Hit it with a hammer, it breaks, and then over the next few minutes it keeps "popping" over and over again. This can make pieces shoot off (not much force, but enough to propel a chunk a few feet), so beware.

Our local landfill just started offering a similar "crushed glass" for use in landscaping. As a completely recycled and very affordable ($20 / cubic yard) material, I was intrigued and went to see what it was.

There are no sharp edges and you can actually walk on it with bare feet. The only color they have is green. I'm looking for a way to incorporate it into my landscape instead of buying gravel.

From our landfill's Web page: "Green glass bottles diverted from the County's recycling program have been crushed smooth to eliminate sharp edges and create a fine, sparkling and unusual groundcover alternative to conventional mulch. Suitable for driveways as well as landscapes."

There are a lot of varieties of landscaping glass available.

Here are colors:
http://www.bourgetbros.com/glass_gallery_page.htm

Photos in use:
http://www.americanspecialtyglass.com/

The faux water is quite lovely.

There are glass boulders too:
http://www.glass-rocks.com/glass-boulders-c-3.html

And there's stuff here for the fireplace/pit that is definitely mirror-like:
http://www.fireplaceglassdirect.com/premixed-crystals.htm

Where could these things be used? On top of planters, indoors or out. And in any table that has a glass top with an area under the top for display:
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/50087072

You could make whimsical shapes using cookie cutters, and either leaving the cookie cutters in, or gently removing them after filling them with one color and filling the surrounding area with another color.

From the links, you can see that various glasses are more or less sharp. And some are not sharp at all, like this Jelly Bean glass:
http://www.thegardenofglass.com/pages.asp?pageid=42657

I bet that would feel really neat to walk on. Maybe not on a hot hot hot day. But it looks like something my toes would delight in digging around in.

Baltimore was sort of ahead of the curve on this one:
http://www.citypaper.com/bob/story.asp?id=14550

Far more comfortable to walk on, but doesn't look quite as cool.