Glue Chip Options for a Frameless Shower

Commercial Glass

• Numerous companies offer domestic glass services for your home. These companies create and sell prefabricated and customized glass for myriad purposes, including shower stalls. Glass service companies build more or less anything you want them to, including glue chipped shower pieces, provided you pay. A glass company in your area may specialize in bathroom glass. A local contractor may also provide customized glass services. Contacting a few companies and asking for price quotes provides you with options and may allow you to get a low price by playing one offer off of another.

DIY Glue Chipping

• If you prefer a more hands-on approach to creating materials for your frameless shower, you can make your own glue chipped glass. This process requires at least 24 hours of your time to complete and involves a number of steps and materials. When it comes to making your own glue chipped glass, you can purchase large sheets of glass cut to the size you need for your project, or buy a customized or prefabricated glass shower unit from a glass company. Glue chipping glass essentially consists of little more than applying a mixture of glue and water to a glass surface -- as it hardens, the glue chips the glass, adding texture to the surface.

Materials

• Creating your own glue chipped glass for a frameless shower requires a handful of specialized materials. First, you need a sandblaster for preparing the glass. You cannot apply glue to a standard glass surface; rather, you must strip off the first layer of glass using sandblasting equipment. You can use any type of glue for glue chipping, though the strength of the glue affects the pattern on the glass. The stronger the glue, the more pronounced and dramatic the pattern. You also need a flat surface on which your glass can sit for as long as 24 hours while the glue dries. You must keep this area away from pets and children, because many sharp shards of glass fly off your surface as the glue dries.

Additional Information

• Frameless showers differ from framed showers only in that they possess no framing elements -- they attach directly to walls, floors or ceilings via brackets or some other fastener. The lack of frames provides a larger glass surface than would a framed shower, giving you more space for glue chipping. The patterns created by glue chipping resemble frost covering a window, also known as a fern pattern. Double chipping, or performing the glue chipping process twice on a the same piece of glass, creates a tighter, more concentrated pattern. The randomness of patterns created by drying glue means that, while all glue chipped glass looks similar, no pieces are identical. However, this also means that you cannot control the pattern.