Home Remodeling Blog
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Green Remodeling
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12.22.09Greening the Kitchen: Make Smart Choices
Green Remodeling, Kitchen Remodeling (0)Jeannie Matteuci San Francisco Chronicle Designers Denna McLaughlin and Celeste Le Sage-Gish, co-owners of the full-service interior design firm City Studios of San Francisco, specialize in innovative kitchen design. But lately it seems many of the homeowners who contact them - no matter the project - have one thing in mind. "A lot of our clients are interested in being eco-friendly or green," says McLaughlin. "Our challenge is helping the client understand what green truly is. It's more than just choosing a wood that's sustainable. There are a lot of different viewpoints on what is green and what is not. The criteria we ...
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12.22.09Options Plentiful for Green Flooring
Flooring, Green Remodeling (0)Home and Garden Television Need help in selecting environmentally friendly flooring? Think green. Several green certification programs and directories are available to help remodelers, builders and homeowners make that selection. For example, the National Wood Flooring Association looks to the Forest Stewardship Council to certify wood-flooring products as green when the material comes from forests operated under sustainable forest-management practices. Other organizations, such as BuildingGreen Inc., publisher of the GreenSpec Directory and Environmental Building News, qualify and list other green-flooring alternatives, such as natural linoleum, cork and concrete. Carpeting: The carpet and rug industry uses a labeling system to identify materials with fewer volatile ...
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07.27.09Green Remodel Eliminates Home’s Electric Bill
Green Remodeling (0)Dana Perrigan San Francisco Chronicle Stepping through the front door, past the foyer and into the living room of Frank and Monika Levinson's home on a bright summer morning, it's easy to forget - for the moment, anyway - that their newly remodeled house in Tiburon is among the greenest around. Just about everything in view through a wall of glass is blue: The waters of the bay from the Golden Gate Bridge flowing past the San Francisco skyline merge seamlessly with the lighter blue of sky. Scattered about on this immense canvas, sailboats and ferries appear motionless. Once you get past the ...
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06.19.09Take Off That Mask: Paints Have Gone Green
Green Remodeling, Painting (0)Adrianne Stone Mother Nature Network Adding paint color inside your home can provide vibrancy, enhance your mood and create a sense of personality in an otherwise drab room. It can also give you cancer. Yes, those wonderful color palettes that have you swooning over the warm gold in your new living room, the pastel blues or pinks you're planning for your nursery, and the glossy peach tones in your bathroom contain something called volatile organic compounds — and they're deadly. Paints mainly release these chemicals into the air during application and drying, but fumes can continue to waft out for years. By ...
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04.29.09Kitchen Remodeling Trends Include ‘Green’ Cabinets
Green Remodeling, kitchen cabinets (0)Chris Matey Andover Townsman Here in Andover, we are seeing an increased interest in green home remodeling. Specifically, green kitchen remodeling is a growing area of interest. There are many ways to go green in your kitchen - floors, countertops, appliances, cabinets and finishes, including paints. Let's focus on green cabinetry. There are materials and finishes in a renovated kitchen that can cause air-quality issues. For example, inexpensive wood-based products offgass formaldehyde. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, formaldehyde can cause cancer or eye and upper respiratory irritation. The good news is that there are eco-friendly alternatives. Many homeowners have at least heard ...
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12.09.08‘Green’ a Growing Kitchen Trend
Green Remodeling, Kitchen Remodeling (1)Alex Vega Associated Press In any home remodeling project, the kitchen typically gets more than its share of attention - and budget - even more so when it comes to an environmentally-friendly overhaul. From countertops, to cabinetry and electricity chugging appliances, options to reduce the carbon imprint of your kitchen abound. Before diving into a full-home green renovation, however, experts suggest leaving the kitchen for last. For one, sealing windows, upgrading the home heating system and insulation can have more of an impact on energy efficiency than anything done in the kitchen. Another reason: money. On a square-foot basis, kitchen remodels can easily end up eating much ...
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11.10.08‘Green Building’ Gives Reusable Materials New Life
Green Remodeling (0)Staci Matlock The New Mexican Solid oak flooring, carved pine doors, handmade ceramic lighting fixtures, flagstone and plumbing pipe. What one builder or home renovator doesn't need becomes another's treasures at places like Habitat Restore and Rio's Salvage in Santa Fe. And seasoned wood recovered from old barns and cabins is prized for new home construction. Recycling useable old materials or excess building materials is an important aspect of "green" building. New "green building" standards are increasingly giving higher marks to builders who reuse existing materials or reduce waste at construction sites. Santa Fe's new proposed green building code and the Leadership ...
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11.03.08Green Improvements Can Add to a Home’s Appeal
Green Remodeling (0)Lew Sichelman United Features Syndicate Reporting from Washington — There is no question that green has captured the imagination, if not the pocketbooks, of new-home buyers. But that raises a question: What can sellers of existing homes do to compete with builders for the hearts and minds of potential green-leaning customers? As it turns out, the answer is: plenty. It's just a matter of how much money you want to spend. You can turn your place into at least a pale shade of green for, say, no more than $500. Or you can go all-out by spending thousands. Obviously, you won't be able to ...
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08.21.08Rain Gardens: The Eco-Friendly Landscaping Option Is Catching On
Green Remodeling, Landscaping (0)Bob Shaw Pioneer Press If Brown's Creek had arms, it would hug Elizabeth Brod. The creek is healthier now that Brod has installed two water-cleansing rain gardens in her back yard. Better yet, her homeowners association helped persuade 12 neighbors to do the same. "It was very worry-free," she said as she tended the new plantings in the fresh mulch of her Stillwater yard earlier this month. She is one reason Minnesota leads the nation in water-cleaning landscaping techniques, including lakeshore plantings. Another reason is the half-price sale on water-cleaning projects, subsidized by counties and watershed groups. If they have their way, ...
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08.10.08Home Projects Can Be Earth Friendly
Green Remodeling (0)Arlene Miles Chicago Daily Herald Green is definitely the buzz word of the moment. From conserving fuel and finding ways to reduce greenhouses gases, being ecologically minded is on almost everyone's minds. But when it comes to remodeling a home, can one actually achieve green? Furthermore, what does green remodeling actually mean? Some consider it to be simply conserving energy, while others say it is recycling materials removed from your home so they don't end up in landfills. Yet, others worry about indoor air quality. In reality, it's a combination of all three and even more, encompassing the selection of sustainable materials and local ...
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04.29.08Solar Roofing Becomes More Subtle, Saves Money
Green Remodeling, Roofing (1)When many people think of a solar roof, they envision something that looks like a space station. But, that's no longer the case. Solar has gone subtle. Homeowners Dave Levinson and Nancy Elam replaced their northwest Washington roof with solar shingles. Because of the traditional architecture of their home, they didn't want the solar roof to be a distraction so they turned to a product called sun slates. Bob Bennett, the solar specialist who installed the roof, said the solar shingles are becoming the rage. He said that sun slate has a cement composite backing with a small solar panel connected to it. The 420 solar ...
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04.04.08Ceramic Tile: A Beautiful Green Building Option
Green Remodeling, Stone and Tile (0)Today more homeowners want to know that the materials they are using to build or remodel are eco-friendly – so they’re building and remodeling with ceramic tile. Tile is a very “green” material. It is made from natural clay that has been fired. Because it has an extremely long life, it needs to be replaced less often, which means less waste in landfills. When you’re thinking of purchasing tile for your home project and you want to feel good about your decision from an environmental standpoint, here are some points you should consider: 1) Does the manufacturer recycle any of the ...
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03.05.08Boost Home Value, Get Cheaper Bills
Green Remodeling (0)Keith Pandolfi This Old House The biggest investment Key Largo, Florida, homeowners John Hammerstrom and Diane Marshall made toward energy efficiency in their eco-friendly home is the 2.8-kilowatt Kyocera solar panel system that adorns their rooftop. The panels, packed with photovoltaic cells, convert sunshine into the electrical current that provides half their household's power needs. The couple's electric bills typically run an affordable $50 per month in the summer, when the AC is kicking, and a measly $15 when it's not. If you're thinking of following John and Diane's example, there are a few things to consider, including the kind of equipment you'll need. ...
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02.27.08Green Works for Remodeling, Too
Green Remodeling (0)by Susan Thurston St. Petersburg Times After earning a reputation as the office recycling queen, Nicole Kibert decided it was time to make an even stronger statement. She would build a home using as many environmentally friendly practices as her budget would allow. Kibert, 31, started construction on her "green" house last March after several months of planning. In November, she and her dog moved in. A lawyer, Kibert isn't shy about proselyting the merits of her two-story house . in Tampa. In fact, that's the whole idea. Get people thinking about ways to make their homes more gentle on the Earth. Kibert didn't keep ...
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01.23.08A Green Home Can Still Be Traditional
Green Remodeling (0)Wade Rawlins McClatchy Newspapers RALEIGH, N.C. — The brick house in Raleigh's Meredith Woods subdivision looks like thousands of other big new homes in the area. But this 4,300-square-foot house that Jonathan Philips and his family moved into a few months ago might be one of the greenest mainstream houses in the state, if not the country. It is a showcase for hundreds of environmentally friendly designs that could inspire homebuilders to try similar features. At the same time, its resemblance to other nongreen houses on the cul-de-sac is precisely the point. Cherokee Investment Partners, of Raleigh, the nation's largest redeveloper of polluted lands, built ...
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11.08.07All Systems Green: Building Conservation into Remodeling
Green Remodeling (0)By Sandra Fleishman Special to The Washington Post Saturday, October 27, 2007; Page F01 Going green isn't just for those building new homes. Homeowners can also remodel in ways that conserve energy and natural resources. To help them, the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Partnership for Advancing Technology in Housing released a list earlier this month of the top 10 remodeling projects to improve energy and efficiency. The effort is a voluntary partnership involving leaders in the home-building, product manufacturing, insurance and financial industries, and representatives of federal agencies. These recommendations are "definitively proven," said PATH representative Dana Bres, though he notes ...
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11.08.07Energy Efficiency Ranks #1 in Consumer Green Buliding Priorities
Green Remodeling (0)A new survey conducted for the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) confirms that a desire for greater energy efficiency drives consumers to choose a green-built home. “Green building is the home buyer’s best defense against soaring energy costs,” said NAHB President Brian Catalde, a Southern California home builder. “But it’s up to the nation’s home builders to make sure the cure is not more expensive than the problem itself. The NAHB National Green Building Program paves the way for authentic yet cost-effective green building,” he said. The voluntary program, based on the three-year-old NAHB Model Green Home Building Guidelines, is set ...
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10.17.07Faux Wood and Foam-Based Products Get the Green Treatment
Green Remodeling (0)Faux Wood and Foam-Based Products Get the 'Green' Treatment Source: San Diego Business Journal Publication date: August 13, 2007 By Broderick, Pat It's nice to fool Mother Nature. So say the folks toiling away at the Miramar Place warehouse of The PCF Group, a home-grown manufacturer of "faux" wood and stone products for residential and commercial uses. But PCF also has been courting the good graces of Mother Nature by becoming an Earth-friendly, green business, according to Vice President Scott Buckley. "We started embracing this new movement," he said. "We thought, 'What should we do on the back end?"' First, PCF started examining ...
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