I have all glass shelves in my glass front cabs. I have really heavy platters and soup plates and glasses etc stacked on all of them. I haven't had any problems at all. There are tiny brass pegs in the sides of the cabs that the shelves rest on. If you want closeup pics I can do it later today. c

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tempered glass properties physical

In a kitchen the glass is tempered glass. It's strong.

I have glass shelves in 15", 30" and 36" inch cabinets. While I've put tall stacks of plates in the 30", if I were to do it over again I would have done two 18" cabinets instead of one 36".

When I loaded up the 36" shelves with stacks of bowls (I'm a bit of a bowl-aholic), the glass bowed slightly and that made me quite nervous. I rearranged to put the heaviest bowls on the bottom wood shelf and now have glassware and lighter items on the upper shelves.

And in all of the cabinets, I added extra shelves so I can distribute the weight of dishes across more area.

This is the 30" and 15":

And this is the 36":

Trailrunner - your cabinet doors are gorgeous and so is the transom window! Wow!

They did not use tempered glass . It is regular glass. I just called my glass company to double check. I have it in the long run you see they are 32" long and in the ones over my marble coffee bar , they are 30" long. These are all 3/16" thick.

close up of 3/16 reg. glass in kitchen cabs:

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I have it in my built in china cab that is original to my 1890 home in my DR lately turned into a sitting room . These are 1/4" thick since they are 63 " long ! They are gorgeous and I love the really thick glass. It is plenty strong enough at these lengths for all of the weight I have been putting on them for 6 years. I also asked my glass company and the price for the 3/16 and 1/4 is the same. As I said the 1/4" is really gorgeous and rich looking. Here are some more pics.

Zoe: thank you ! The glass doors are all salvaged Arts and Craft antique windows. The transom windows are all salvage also...I have 3 of them.

I LOVE your cabs too !! Beautiful bowls and glass ware.

cab over marble counter...all cabs are 48" tall :

built in china cab 1/4 " thick reg. glass shelves:

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Let me know if I can answer any other questions. c

Who will be using your kitchen primarily?

I wasn't worried about tempered glass breaking. However, my kids put away the dishes and also set the table. And they are noisy enough as it is. So I could just envision the clank of every glass or plate coming and going off those shelves.

So I chose wood shelves in my glass-doored cabinet...for now.

Thicker is better. And scratching is bad.

Zoecat17--what kind of glass do you have in your glass cabinets?

We have glass shelves as well and have not had any issues with them - although shorter runs are better as they don't bow as much under the weight. I have heavy stoneware plates but keep them on the lowest level so they sit on the wood instead of on the glass. We love the shelves and the light airy feel they give the kitchen - we've had no issues with scratching or dust - would do them again in heartbeat.

Thank you all for your input. What beautiful glass front cabinets! I guess I had not really considered all the variables in the equation - length, thickness, type of glass. Still undecided, but feeling a little better about the idea.

oh Lauren I always forget how MUCH I love your cabs....really pretty.

I agree with colorfast...if I had kids I wouldn't do it. This is not a kitchen for children...you can always change them out in the future. c

annsch -

The glass is "European Clear River Ice Vertical" from Bendheim - it's really pretty IRL!

Here is a link that might be useful: Bendheim River Ice

I wanted to get an idea of how much a "generic" glass shelf would hold, so checked out Ikea. A post on the Ikeafans site claims that their tempered glass shelves (reported as 3/8 and 1/4?) can hold 20-22 pounds. I weighed a stacks of 12 of my plates; lunch size-16 pounds! dinner size-24 pounds! Although I'm sure I could get stronger shelves at a glass place, I think I will sleep better with wooden shelves for those cabinets. Rats.

We just remodeled using glass shelves because we have frosted glass cabinets and I wanted the light to shine all the way down. As a result, all food and brightly-colored baking cookware are down below in the solid cabinets. But I L*O*V*E the glass shelves! (See picture at end of thread "New Kitchen! ooooeeeee!")

thanks zoecat

Six years on and counting so maybe I’m preaching to an empty room, but in reference to your comment about IKEA’s stated tolerances Mulemom I would bet a years‘ salary that they are greatly understating those tolerances to protect themselves from liability. Even glass makers are hesitant to state tolerances. Quarter inch tempered glass will fail at the brackets before the glass does and the brackets on, say the Fabrikor cabinets are not going to fail. In other words unless we are talking about hundreds of pounds I don’t think you need to worry about 1/4” tempered glass unless it’s damaged and even then I think you would really have to try to break it for it to break. My only recommendation is to make sure the spans are not too wide.