Don’t Toss Old Glass Bottles — Use Them To Make Beautiful DIY Pavers On A Budget

Stop recycling colorful glass bottles the traditional way! No, we’re not suggesting that you toss them in the trash. Instead, turn them into something beautiful for your home. The Everyday Builders YouTube channel demonstrates how to use small broken pieces of glass in DIY pavers for little glints of colorful decorations. The process is essentially to create a concrete mixture and add the colorful pieces into it before putting it in molds and letting it harden. It’s perfect if you want to install a brick paver patio or walkway around your home.

You can use any glass bottles for this project, but tinted glass will show up best in the pavers you make. Wine bottles often come in different shades — typically variations of green and amber brown. Cobalt blue is also an option in some alcohol bottles. You will have to break the glass bottles, which can be dangerous. That step requires a container, like a shallow metal pan, a piece of cardboard, a hammer, and fabric to cover it all. If you don’t want to mess with that, buy glass marbles or sea glass to use instead. These options already come in small, colorful glass pieces.

To make the paver material, you’ll also need sand and concrete, as well as a mold. If you don’t have access to a paver mold, you can use a container you have around home. Use old pie pans to make charming DIY pavers, for example. To prepare the glass, put the glass in a sturdy container, cover it with cardboard, and put it in a pillowcase or a similar piece of fabric. Wear safety goggles as an extra precaution. Gently hit the bottles with a hammer to break it into pieces.

When you turn upcycled materials into DIY pavers, you get stunning, one-of-a-kind results. In this case, you’re mixing glass with part of your paver mixture and using a standard paver mixture for the rest, so you won’t need as much glass. That glass portion consists of one part glass, one part cement, and two parts sand. The rest of the brick uses six parts sand and one part cement. You can add coloring to the wet concrete to tint the bricks.

Mix the dry ingredients first and add water until you reach the desired consistency — roughly the texture of peanut butter. Gently mix in your glass pieces or other mix-ins you. Then, mix up your larger batch for the remaining blocks — make that mixture drier, so it holds an impression when you touch it. Lubricate your paver mold to allow the bricks to come out easily. You can use a concrete release product or canola oil cooking spray. Pour a thin layer of the glass mixture (no more than an inch) into the bottom of the mold, followed immediately by the plain concrete. If you’re going to use the bricks upright so that both sides will be visible, you can also press rocks, seashells, or other hard decorative items into the top of the concrete.

After 24 hours, pour water over the bricks. Continue this while it cures — at last seven days but 28 days for full curing. Once the bricks are ready, use glass sandpaper to sand the side with the glass. This reveals more of the colored glass. Continue sanding with wet sandpaper on a wet brick until you reveal as much glass as you want.