I have some very nice custom cabinetry with glass fronted doors. One of the doors has a scratch in the glass, not deep (but deep enough to catch a fingernail on) and I'm wondering what if any remedy might be available?

tanstaafl.

You could take a black sharpie and paint in the scratch, that might make it less noticeable.

Take the door to a glass shop. They should have no problem replacing the glass with new. Most likely cheaper than you might think.

A new piece of glass. Unless there's etching or complicated beveling, it's almost certainly not worth your while to try to "remove" the scratch. Glass is cheap and almost always very easy to replace.

If you want to repair it, there are three theoretical options:

• Fill the scratch with a material that has the same refractive index as the glass. These tend to chip out, and different glasses have different refractive properties.
• Buff the scratch out. Unless you're willing to live with very noticeably scratched glass, you're going to spend hours polishing.
• Melt the glass. Take a blowtorch to it and you might be able to knock the sharp edges off of the scratch. I cannot imagine that this would work well at all in practice. You're far too likely to melt soot into the glass, have a nasty sag, or torch a hole through it, or all of the above, assuming you can get it to melt at all. Sounds like a fun thing to try after you've already replaced the glass, though.

The only problem with replacing the glass is that you might wind up replacing the glass in all the cabinets.

The new might just not match the existing in some way or another. The color of the glass might be off, just enough to notice. Same for the thickness. Then there is the fact that the new glass is well... New! No dust or smut in the corners.

How about an auto glass shop and have them do the chip repair were they fill it with epoxy.

I cannot get images of Pat and Mat from A Je To cartoons out of my head. Sorry!

Except I think all the proposed solutions sound far too simple and straight-forward for Pat and Mat. MIssing from the list is cutting out a replacement piece of glass from your neighbor's windows, filling in the scratch with peanut butter, or some other hair-brained alternative.

I hadn't heard of them until now. Thanks, bonzi! (And YouTube!)

There is complicated beveling, and it would not be easy to replace. The cabinet door would have to be replaced as the glass is very integrally sandwiched into a very seriously glued-together wooden frame.

I think I can live with the scratch, and was wondering if something like Carnauba car wax might make it less noticeable. As you can see from the picture, it is not a traumatizing defect.

The other picture shows the whole cabinet. To get an idea of the scale, that refrigerator is 68" tall. And Bitt, you will be pleased to see that I did indeed "...replace that chandelier in the kitchen..."

tanstaafl.

Yeah, even that relatively simple beveling is going to quadruple the price of the glass.

Again, go talk to a glass shop.

There is always the get used to it, it adds character option.

Yeah! In fact, add more scratches!

OK, Bitt, and when I do that are you gong to pitch in and help pay for the divorce attorney?

tanstaafl.

Bumper Sticker!

Forget the cabinet, that ceiling is great, is the whole house vaulted brick? What does the roof look like?

Both the kitchen and the bedroom have the vaulted brick ceiling -- called a boveda in español.

The high point of the ceiling is 14 feet above the floor.

You can get a feel for the layout by looking at the attached pictures.

tanstaafl.

Neat and clean, dose the the roof drain into a cistern.

No. We are on municipal water here. The municipal water is said to be non-potable, OK for bathing and tooth brushing, not for consumption. That said, I am unaware of anyone actually becoming ill from drinking it.

tanstaafl.

Looks great, one of the techniques we looked at was a vaulted tiled roof, more freeform than that, more like this:

http://iwan.com/photo_Mapungubwe_Interpretation_Centre_Peter_Rich.php

The engineer (Michael Ramage) that designed the vaults there was the guy that worked on ours.