Shards of glass flooded the entrance hall. Each tiny splinter stabbing soft, bare feet – staining the mahogany floorboards blood red.
Ours was an old house, hauntingly beautiful but in need of restoration. In the eight weeks since we moved in, I’d expertly chosen every wall colour, soft furnishing and light fixture. It was to become our sanctuary. A safe haven that, in seconds, became my very own asylum filled with screaming children, frightened pets and me. My dream of being the perfect housewife and homemaker were shattered when the multi-paned windows on either side of the front door crashed to the floor.
“I just had them sandblasted,” I mumbled to the handyman who’d arrived to assess the damage. I’d chosen a classic Victorian design to complement the old house but it didn’t matter now I thought as I stared at the devastation.
“Did you say sandblasted?” the wiry handyman asked, his piercing blue eyes filled with blame and pity. I nodded yes.
“Ma’am, welcome to your worst nightmare.”
The handyman hit the nail on the head when intimating that sandblasting on glass can be your worst nightmare.
Sandblasting on glass, while an old favourite, is not an ideal window treatment. Usually the glass is removed from your premises in order to be treated and this can leave you with a security risk in your home or office. Furthermore if the glass isn’t removed and you have the treatment performed on site, it can prove a very messy affair to have to contend with.
If the character in our horror story had used window vinyl, hers would have been a very different story altogether.
Sandblasting on glass removes up to 2mm off the surface of the glass and this weakens the glass. Precisely why the character in our horror story is facing the devastation in her home – if she had used window vinyl on the glass panes in her front doors, the windows would not have broken so easily and certainly not have shattered. Window vinyl makes glass shatterproof as the shards of glass stick to the vinyl as opposed to splintering all over the floor.
Window vinyl would have given exactly the same effect as the decorative sandblasting but with a far more positive outcome. Sandblasting on glass is a very expensive exercise and this treatment is also not suitable to all types of glass. For instance, you can’t sandblast your sliding doors as the glass is too thin. Furthermore, sandblasting on glass makes use of dangerous chemicals whereas window vinyl has eco-friendly properties and offers UV protection.
If you have a penchant for the frosted effect and design style of sandblasting on glass and would like to know more about the better alternative of window vinyl then please contact Window Art directly.
