I bought my house back in early 1999. Two years later, in August of 2001, someone broke in. This has, of course, already been chronicled elsewhere. The intruder or intruders (I never found out which) broke the window on my basement door, undid the deadbolt, and let themselves in.
That very same day, I had a locksmith replace the lock with one that couldn’t be opened without a key. That way, even if someone breaks the window again, they still won’t be able to get in without making a lot more noise as they break out the metal framework that holds the window in place. As for the glass itself, I decided to be somewhat “creative” with the replacement.
The original window consisted of two sheets of tempered safety glass with a one-eighth inch spacer and vacuum in between. When the glass was broken, it made a mess of tiny cubes on the floor, but there were no large shards (a happy situation for me since I wasn’t wearing shoes when I discovered it). Rather than replace it with more glass and possibly have the same experience, I instead went out and bought two sheets of Lexan.
If you’ve never heard of it, Lexan is a special type of plastic (a polycarbonate actually) that is exceptionally durable. The display at Home Depot has a square of it in a window frame with a baseball hanging in front of it that people can throw as hard as they want to try and break the “window.” Nobody ever succeeds. I’ve also seen it used to make plates and cutlery for camping and any variety of other things you want to be durable but lightweight. The only way I’ve ever succeeded in breaking a piece of Lexan was to cut it with a saw or else fold it in half, lean on it with my full weight, and bounce several times. (This stuff is tough!) Installed in a window frame, I figured it would be nearly unbreakable. And that was the general idea. 🙂
One of the neighborhood kids broke into our house when I was growing up. He didn’t take anything, just made a mess, strewing toys all over the place. My reaction to that break in was the same as my reaction to this one – I was extremely annoyed that I had to clean up the mess. As I said, Lexan is extremely tough, so if someone was going to try breaking into my house again then by golly, I wanted the pleasure of finding the guilty party laying unconscious on the deck after the rock bounced off the window and hit them in the head!

That was probably the cleverest mistake I’ve ever made. Replacing breakable glass with something that’s hard to break makes a lot of sense. I’m proud of that part of the decision. But perhaps you’re wondering by now, if Lexan is so tough, why don’t they use it instead of glass? The price is about the same, but it turns out that Lexan isn’t a very good insulator (particularly the way I’d installed it without a vacuum seal between the two sheets). Over the past winter or two, I’ve noticed a pretty strong draft by that door. At first I thought it was the weatherstripping, but over time, I realized that the cold air was coming in around the window. (No doubt there was a similar loss of cool air during the summer months.)
Coming into December of 2005, I had nearly three weeks of unused vacation time. Since we have a “use it or lose it” vacation policy at work, I decided to spend the time working on various projects around the house. Item one was to measure the glass in the door and order a replacement window. A couple quick measurements and like a flash, I was off to the glass company. Turns out that glass for doors is a special order and it’ll take about three weeks to arrive. No problem. Installing the glass will be the last thing I do before going back to work.
Remember I mentioned that there were two sheets of glass in the window? It turns out that not only is there no standard height and width for the window in a door, there’s no standard thickness either. So much for ordering the glass that day! And by the time I did manage to disassemble the window and measure the spacer, it was already the end of December.
All of this practice taking the window apart and putting it back together again paid off though. When I called to order the window, I learned that it was going to cost nearly $200 for the glass company to come out and install it. By picking it up in person and installing it myself, I was able to bring the price down to less than$100. (Note to self: If this programming gig turns out to just be a fad, there’s big money to be made installing windows in basement doors!)
I picked up the new piece of glass during my lunch break on Monday. There were a few other things going on that evening, so I left the glass sitting in the living room and said a silent prayer that Wylie would refrain from knocking it over.
After dinner this evening I went down to the basement and disassembled the window for what I sincerely hope will be the last time. The new glass is installed in the door, the Lexan is leaning up against the wall, waiting to be used in some other project, and I’m hopefully doing a bit less to heat the outdoors.
The project’s done, and you know what? It wasn’t too “paneful” after all!