I'm refitting my kitchen, and am going to build a custom island in the centre. The wife has said that she would like the top in black glass. Having looked around at coloured glass splashbacks and so on, it seems to me that we are looking at real TTP prices here. So, my question is, does anyone have any known good suppliers for this sort of thing (I'm looking for a piece about 1.2m x 0.9m) or alternatively, what's the opinions on getting a piece of toughened plate glass from a local supplier, and spraying the back surface black? Obviously, I would need to fabricate a stainless steel edge or whatever to hide the green edge of the glass, but it seemed to me to perhaps be the way to go at an affordable price.
Any kitchen designers / fitters out there care to venture any comments ?
Ah, well, now there I've got the answer ! It is called an "E-Cloth". The sales woman in Comet where we bought the cooker from, put us onto this incredible product. The kitchen / bathroom set, comprises two cloths. One looks a bit like a face flannel, and the other like it has been cut from a golf shirt. You use nothing but cold water on the first cloth. You can use it on any hard surface including glass (windows and your cooker top etc) tiles, enamel (we have a high gloss black fridge), stainless steel, painted wood and so on. I haven't the slightest idea how it can possibly remove greasy smears using just cold water, but it does. You then go over the surface with the second cloth, and it brings the surface up like a mirror (oh yes, it does mirrors too !) The whole process is effortless - and I really do mean that as one of the world's great lazy, when it comes to cleaning. You can give the cloths a 60 degree wash up to 300 times, apparently, without compromising their performance.
Comet sell them, as do Waitrose and B&Q, and I think I saw them in Tesco the other day. They come in various 'package deals', but you definitely need the two-cloth one, that has the green general cloth, and the blue polishing one in it. About a fiver for the pair, and worth every brass cent.
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one is 9 quid, but that is John Lewis price, and I have seen the same pack elsewhere, cheaper.
And no, I'm nothing to do with E-Cloth. Me and the missus are just two very very satisfied customers of an item that actually does exactly what it says on the tin d;~}
I'll have a look at one of them...might be just the thing for the hob. Bear in mind though there's nothing that will tackle the inevitable nicks and scratches - save for a matt finish ( which never looks quite as black ).
Yes, that's true. However, that said, in the past, I have had great success filling scratches in black shiny hifi bits and pieces, using an oil-based felt tip. I bought a box of 'em at a radio rally for a quid some years back. Sadly, the last one was used up some time back, and I've never seen them since. They used to write with a real thick sort of 'gloop' that you could just pen down a scratch, and then wipe back off with the tip of your finger. When it had dried, you could just polish it up with a cloth, and barely see the original scratch, unless you were really looking for it.
As far as the E-Cloth goes, do please have a go with one. I am sure that you will not be disappointed.
Know that unless I was convinced that it really was worth talking about, I wouldn't bother pushing it on here. You know when you come across a product, and you think to yourself "that really is magic", well, this is one of those products.
I was under the impression that glass was one of the easiest surfaces to maintain in a hygienic state. Wood and plastic boards are much harder to keep clean because the cut marks provide useful havens for germs.
Incidentally, the Fairy Hygiene Liquid ad warns that "After preparing food, germs could be breeding in your sponge."
If germs have been good enough to prepare food, I recon they deserve a bit of fun in the sponge.
I know the sort of pen you mean...I had a blue one like that, pinched from the BBC. I used to use it for touching up the finish on the case of a certain make of flute that used a blue leather cover.
A bit like magic Lighter Fluid then!
I have written it down and will have a look for one next time I'm in town.
Knifes aren't hard enough, but the rough bottom of a piece of crockery can be. Don't worry about seeing the scratch though -- you'll never find which of the resulting 10,000 pieces of glass it's on.
We had a set of glass tables in the canteen at work. After about the third case of a laud bang and 4 unlucky people sitting with a lapful of meat, 2 veg, gravy, yorkshire pudding, apple crumble and custard, and broken glass, they were decided to be too unsafe and scrapped.
Considering that in general, it takes something pretty hard like a diamond to scratch glass, and that 'normal' work surfaces, which are considerably softer than glass, don't suffer cutting marks all that easily, I would have thought that glass was going to be pretty duarble and resistant to this sort of damage. Particularly if toughened, or even tempered glass was used ??
FWIW, glass worktops are 'in vogue' at the moment, which is why I guess that the missus wants one, so they must be successful in resisting damage, I would have thought. They are not, as far as I can see, made from 'coloured' glass. They are made from low iron (so not green) clear plate glass, that is treated on its back face with a high durability paint. So perhaps I could just get a piece of plate glass cut and bevelled from a local supplier, and spray the bugger up myself ...
Another alternative that I had considered was to get four 600mm square high gloss black ceramic or marble or whatever they are, floor tiles. Topps will do wet cuts for a couple of quid a time, so I could then set up whatever size I wanted. I tried contacting a couple of places that did the glass worktop, and they suggested that I needed 10mm toughened glass, and quoted me £500 for a piece 1.2m x 0.9m.
The first two people who were on the crumble and custard, were on first break, whilst the other two who were only on their meat and two veg, were on second break ... Obvious really ... d;~}
That's certainly true for plastic chopping boards. The irony is people buy them thinking they must be very hygenic, when actually they were very good at cross contamination as the cut marks cannot be cleaned. I think they've had to stick Microban in them all now.
Timber traditionally used as cutting boards has its own anticeptic properties, and doesn't cross-contaminate anywhere near as badly as plastic did. I wouldn't bet much that many of the cheap boards you can find from the 3rd world are made by people who understand which woods are safe and which aren't though.
Breeding bugs, and smearing them across all surfaces is all sponges are for. You won't find one in my kitchen for cleaning anything food related as that would be pointless.
Black Glass..................Don't.........Just don't..OK.
3 problems with the one I have seen.
1 Scratched VERY easily with crockery dragged across.
2 Put *anything* quite hot on the surface, then remove it and lean on it....I bet you use some choice expletives.
3 Drop a metallic or heavy object on it and see how many pieces you can count on the floor *after* you think you have vacuumed it all up.....My money says at *least* a hundred or more.
Granite.........Just as easily cleaned, and it really doesn't have to be an arm and a leg..... Look out for a large chainstore refit.
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