We’ve had an email from Whitney, asking about reuse/recycling ideas for glass blocks (or glass bricks, as they’re also known):

We just bought a house and making a lot of renovations. We removed some glass blocks from an old bathroom window and I want to reuse them for something. I love glass blocks and since they didn’t get broken in the renovation process I’d love to do something with them. I’d love to be able to drill holes in them and place lights for outdoor use, but don’t know how to do it. I was also thinking about just placing them around the garden, but am looking for some more innovative ideas.

I love the idea of using them in the garden – for bed/path edging for example, or if you have a lot of them, as a privacy screen/divider. I imagine in time the edge seals might become damaged and bugs or greenery may creep inside but that could look pretty cool too :)

More creatively, I’ve seen them used effectively as the “legs” on simple tables – panels of glass blocks at each end of the table top, though I’m not sure how it was all fixed together – any ideas?

Any other practical or creative suggestions for using them either inside or outside of the house?

We’ve had an email from Daniel:

Can I recycle roofing felt? I have a lot of small pieces to get rid of.

I’ve not heard of it being recyclable and looking into it, it seems unlikely because it’s several hard/impossible to recycle materials all squished together.

The better option would be to use it up somehow. Small pieces can be used for various roofing projects in the garden – for example, on top of rabbit hutches or the like*, or really small pieces could be used for the roof of a covered bird table.

As always, if you can’t use it up/reuse it in that way, try offering the pieces on your local Freecycle/Freegle group — someone nearby may make hutches or bird tables and be able to include it in their work.

Any other suggestions for using up small pieces of roofing felt? Daniel doesn’t say how small is small but I’m imagining roll-ends and off-cuts, so nothing more than a few feet wide.

* it’s not recommended to use roofing felt on anything to do with chicken coops because it provides a perfect breeding ground for red mites – but our coop came with it on the nest box part and it’s actually the least red mite-y area in the coop. I wouldn’t include it if I was building a coop from scratch though.