Stained Glass Mosaic Table

Every once in a while I see something that someone discarded and I think it might still be useful. This project is one of those projects. Where I took items that no one wanted, a little time, and magic happens something nice comes out from old junk.

It started with an ugly old table with lose joints and a bad paint job and a box of stained glass cut offs

For this project I used:

An old table

Wood Glue

Clamps

Stained glass left overs from other projects

Balsa wood

Razor knife

Glass nippers

Clear epoxy

spray paint

grout.

grout float and sponge

The first step is getting the old table into better shape

A little sand paper to remove the lose paint. ( Used 250 grit because that was what I had on hand)

A little wood glue in the joints that were spreading, and clamp them together for a day, take a 24 hour break

I have a lot of left over small pieces of stained glass since I do stained glass projects also, but If you aren't so lucky then you can buy left overs and cut offs from eBay, cheap, or you can do this project with pre-cut mosaic tiles, or buy a bunch of old dishes at a tag sale and break them up, what you need is something to make a mosaic with.

For the glass, I used a glass nipper to cut angled pieces of glass off of my scrap pieces and sorted them in color families. I ended up using four color families:

Orange

Yellow

Green

Blue

The table top was not in great shape and I wanted a smooth surface to work on so I choose to use Balsa wood planks to create a smooth surface. Since there was no need for structural strength just flatness. If I needed a structural support I would have used an MDF or plywood product, (depending on what I found in the basement). Balsa is also easy to cut with a razor knife, no saw needed just measure twice and cut once.

Using wood glue I glued the balsa wood in place and weighted it down with a bucket full of ... Bird seed, any weight will do, no go take another 24 hr break.

I sprayed the entire table with a primer ( in this case white was what I had around), The grass looked nice also, luckily grass grows and the painted part gets cut off in a week or so.

I designed a simple pattern for this table squares in the corners and a center square broken into four parts.

Then I started gluing down all of the mosaic pieces while staying in the lines I had to cut some pieces to fit in the smaller spaces, but I just kept cutting and gluing fitting and moving until as much space as I could fill was filled up.

I used as two part epoxy that dries clear under each piece of glass, and I like to use old hotel key cards as glue spreaders to make sure that the glue is mixed well and spread evenly.

When your pattern is complete then it is time for painting

mask off the mosaic table top with masking tape

and spray paint the table the color of your choice, I choose a gloss white, because that was what I had, and I thought white would look goods with the colors of glass that I had chosen

After about three coats I was happy with the paint, and I sprayed a final coat of clear lacquer to seal the paint.

I used a pre-mixed grout in white, I had to buy this because I didn't have any spare grout around the house.

Using a grout float push the grout around the glass mosaic keeping the float at about a 45 degree angle so that the grout fills the space between the glass pieces.

using a clean grout sponge wipe the excess grout off of the table top, in the morning the will be a dry film left on top of the Mosaic glass wipe it again with a damp clean sponge and it will be in great shape, ready to put in your daughters room

This was a fun, low cost project using stuff that would end up in a land fill. Now my daughter uses it in her apartment next to her bed.