Bathroom Renovation #2 - The Damn Glass Block Window

What's the best solution to the problem presented by a window in a shower? Replace the window with glass block. At least, that seems to be what everybody does these days. Instead of researching all the companies that make these glass block kits, we just went with Pittsburgh Corning Glass Block, which is what Lowe's carries. Despite the flashy website, I hate this company's kit. For example, instead of making the various spacers one needs, they give you a generic spacer and explain that you need to make the spacers you'll need by cutting their spacers up and filing them down. Trust me, it's a real pain in the ass!

I spent most of a day framing out the new rough opening per Pittsburgh Corning's specs, according to our plan. Melissa spent a good portion of the day making the stupid glass block spacers and buying other Pittsburgh Corning accessories. At the end of the day I finished my rough opening, Melissa primed it, and we added the plastic channels (breaking one in the process). Again, Pittsburgh Corning's steps suck. They wanted us to rip one of the channels in half (lengthwise) with an exacto blade. Yeah, right. I would like to see an exacto blade that could score this thing enough to rip it. Ours certainly didn't work. A final measurement revealed I was 1/2" short on my height. Oh well. I was done for the day. It would have to work.


The next day we painted the channel screw heads white so they wouldn't show through the glass. And now we were ready to mix the mortar. I hated every bit of this project, especially mixing the mortar...with a piece of wood. Buttering up the glass block sucked even worse than I expected. The mortar wouldn't stick to the glass, so we could only pack it on with our hands. The more we worked, the more mortar slid off our glass block and fell all over the place. Complicating matters was the fact that the outside of the window was above a basement stairwell. So one of us had to be on a ladder on the other side of the window trying to catch mortar and shove it back in. After lots of cursing we managed to fit the last of the glass block in place. We spent the rest of the day messing with the mortar and trying to clean the glass. In the end, I'm sure it will be beautiful. But I sure hated doing it!