Messing around with tools and materials.

I'll admit it, I've got a lot of IKEA stuff in my house. My wife loves buying cheap stuff, and I figure until the kids get to an age where they stop destroying stuff we shouldn't buy nice things anyway.

But most of the IKEA stuff is crap. Usually you can't fix it, but sometimes you get lucky.

Case in point. The other day I heard a crash in the bathroom. The mirror on the medicine chest -- which is a sleek, modern thing with surface mounted hinges -- suddenly detached and fell to the floor, punching a hole in the wall.

Miraculously, the mirror was not dented or scratched, so I resolved to try and fix the cabinet.

The Blum hinges had been attached with a dollop of epoxy to the glass, and I could see that the sloppy factory process only achieved about 60% coverage. Sheesh, guys! Moreover, while there was perfect and very stubborn adhesion to the hinge part, which was textured metal, the epoxy had pulled clean away from the glass.

Duh. The mating surface glass had not been prepared at all for the glue. Very poor manufacturing process.

I ground the epoxy off the hinges with a wire wheel, then took some emory cloth and roughed up the mating surface of glass, until it was dull white. I taped off the footprint on the glass then put on a smooth bed of laminating epoxy with 100% coverage. Same with the hinge. Then I mated them nice and square and let the thing sit for about a week to harden.

Hopefully this glue job will hold longer than the four years of the factory glue.