Add a Touch of Wine Country to your Home

Love the feeling of warmth and sunshine that emanates from the Napa Valley and other wine-producing regions?  One way to bring that sensation home is to incorporate furniture made from reclaimed wine barrels.  The barrels are typically made from the finest oak trees and are free from knots and defects.  During the course of many [...]

Straw Building Products are Really Strong!

Straw, a waste by-product of, most notably, the wheat industry has been gaining in popularity for use in the green building industry, and for good reason.   It’s long been an environmental issue to dispose of straw, the remaining by-product of wheat grain after it is harvested.  Typically, it has been burned which causes serious air [...]

Add Style to Your Living Room with Eco-friendly Furniture

Spending a lot of time indoors this winter?  You may be realizing that some of your furnishings need replacing.  For those on a tight budget, there are several ways to spruce up your living room:  cover existing upholstered furniture with organic cotton slip covers; sand and re-paint or stain existing wood pieces (with natural and [...]

Green Kitchen and Bath Makeovers, Part V

This part of my series on eco-friendly makeovers, I’ll focus on another substantial element in any kitchen or bathroom:  cabinetry.  Whether you’re looking for something sleek and streamlined, or cabinets with a traditional flair, the green options available today will modernize and beautify these much-used rooms.

Green Kitchen and Bath Makeovers, Part III

If you’re looking for a quick fix to spruce up your kitchen or bath, check out my previous post, Part I of this series.  For information on saving energy and water with new appliances and cool gadgets, click here to see Part II.  In the remaining posts for this series, I’ll delve into options for [...]

Bamboo Countertops

In a previous post, I wrote about the pros and cons of bamboo used as a flooring option.  The pros seem to outweigh the cons, as bamboo is a durable surface material not only for flooring, cabinetry and wall panels, but also for countertops.  When using this fast-growing grass (yes, it’s a grass) for an [...]

Surplus, Salvaged and Green Building Materials

Planning a weekend home improvement or remodeling project?  It’s a perfect opportunity to use salvaged and surplus building materials.  Green building warehouses and architectural salvage yards are popping up across the country and are full of interesting, new and used items.  These building elements have been donated by local businesses and residents, as well as [...]

Furniture Artfully Created from Junk Cars

It may sound hard to believe, but artist Joel Hester and his crew at Dallas-based company, The Weld House, salvage steel panels from junk automobiles to create marvelous pieces of functional furniture.  The rough and ravaged pieces of weathered steel are transformed into cool coffee tables, beds, armoires, and artwork.  Some of these modern masterpieces [...]

The Pros and Cons of Bamboo Flooring

Bamboo is a fast-growing grass which is typically ready to harvest every 5 or 6 years, when it reaches optimal hardness, as opposed to hardwoods which take 60+ years to mature.  It regenerates itself and new shoots will start to grow once the harvested bamboo is removed.  Different manufacturers utilize varying methods to process the [...]

The Quiet Beauty of Cork Flooring

The cork oak tree is remarkable in that its outer bark (cork) can be stripped off allowing new bark to grow in its place without harming the trees.  The harvesting of this cork can be done numerous times over the course of the 200 year life of a cork oak tree, making it a sustainable, [...]

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