Celebrating Earth Day with Interiors

Did you celebrate Earth Day on April 22nd? Did you do anything to make your home interior environmentally friendly? Here are some questions to ask yourself when considering a home improvement project or purchase.

1. Have you switched all your incandescent bulbs out for compact fluorescent light bulbs? If not, next time you are in your local hardware store, pick some up. You will have them ready when that next light bulb burns out.
2. Do you really need your heat or air set at the same temperature when you are out of the home or sleeping? Consider installing a programmable thermostat? It will save you money and help save the earth.
3. Is air flowing into your home under doors and windows? Plug them up! Air leaks allow air and heat to sneak outside, making it more difficult for us to control the air in our home. In turn, this makes the air conditioner or furnace work harder. It ends up costing you more money and wasting precious resources.
4. Buy local products. Products made overseas require tons and tons of fuel.
5. Buy items with post-consumer recycled content. This can range from clothes to fabrics, plastic containers to furniture, even coffee mugs.
6. Do you reuse? Reusing ensures less waste goes into landfills. Can you reuse that old piece of furniture? Can you reuse paint you already have in your basement? How about shopping at a thrift or antique store? It’s amazing what your mind can come up with when given the opportunity to save money and make something beautiful for your home!
7. Buy Energy Star Appliances. Replace old appliances with Energy Star models when they break. Your appliances will run more efficiently and can save you money in the long run. Remember to unplug your small appliances when they are not in use because they can still suck up energy.
8. Don’t forget to ask the experts. Decide if buying a sustainable product is an option for you before you buy anything for your home. If so, just ask the expert for more information. I bet you learn something interesting.

Celebrate Earth Day all 365 days in your home! How have you made the Earth better today?

Lighting Portrays History and Artistic Collaboration

So many times we hear about downtown area falling into neglect. We hear of abandoned buildings not transformed and given a second life, but destroyed for something new to be build where an architectural relic once stood. That the dirty gritty industrial sites that are located next to waterways are not the type of sites that can be reborn.

While the city of Buffalo abandoned grain elevators stood empty, Quebec City used their elevator complex as a giant video screen. In celebration of their 400th anniversary, they told their history in a unique and special way. As part of their celebration, they created a light and image show that was forty minutes in length and was projected onto the surfaces of their grain elevators in the Port of Quebec. .

There are 81 grain elevators in the Port of Quebec. The elevators measure 600 meters long by 30 meters tall. The technical sheets says it took twenty seven video projectors, 329 speakers, 574 lighting fixtures using LED’s, 2 lighting boards operating in redundancy, 1.4 kilometers of fiber optic cables, 6 km of DMX cables and 4km of power cables in addition to 160 aluminum supports fused to the membrane of the roof of the grain elevators. It created what has been described as a sensory experience with an animated mosaic that will include engravings, paintings, photos and videos. This visual work of art was divided into four time frames representing the four centuries of Quebec’s history including the waterways, the age of exploration and discovery, road building, clearing and developing the land, the railroad and industrial expansion, and the age of air travel and the development of communications

The men that made this phenomenal project come together were René Lussier, who composed the soundtrack, Robert Lepage and Ex Machina, whose theatrical work is world renown and includes a permanent Cirque du Soleil show in Las Vegas, and Martin Gagnon’s lighting firm Ambiances Lighting and Visual Design, established in 2006. The firm believes that lighting is essential in human perception of their surrounding environment and their experience. It was the close collaboration of these three and hundreds of designers, technicians and work crews that made the science of lighting become art for approximately 5,000 people a night.

A permanent lighting installation, the Aurora Borealis, is in place and again utilizes the old port grain elevators. This show is a movement of light reflecting the beauty of nature inspired by the aurora borealis. The show will run every night from dusk until 11:30pm from now until 2013. Would you attend a show like this if it were in or near your city? What do you think of the use of architectural buildings for this kind of artistic presentation?

Creative and Inexpensive Recycling Projects for Interiors

I think one of the healthiest things you can do to better the environment is using what you have to create something new. Why recreate the entire wheel when you can simply patch it? As garage sale season is around the corner, it’s about time we discuss a few recreation techniques. These are just a few ways to turn a recycling project into a critical part of an interior.

One of the greatest “finds” can be old paintings. These could come from a garage sale, but why not your grandma’s basement? Anywhere you can pick up there are multiple parts that can be used from one find. The actual canvas can always be repainted, but if you are not a Picasso, there are other solutions for reinventing the canvas.

You can always try strip pasting on for size. You could use newspapers, old wrapping paper, paint samples – anything that you can cut into strips and has color. After cutting strips that vary in size you then layer them on the canvas and use simple glue that dries clear. You brush it on in layers until the entire canvas is covered in the desired material. You can either reframe this masterpiece or hang it with no frame.

The frame can always be reused as well. An easy repaint job can make a world of difference. If you are lucky enough to find multiple frames that have different sizes, shapes and textures, you can make them more uniform by painting them the same color. A neutral in a metallic, black or white would work best.

So, now from one “found” piece, you can create many inexpensive new art pieces for your space. Maybe even an entire accent wall! Old mirrors with frames could be used as part of this collage as well. It all depends on what kinds of garage sale finds are available this season.

Another neat piece to keep your eyes peeled for are old records (LPs). Old records, I think, can make the coolest accent wall. You will need many of them, and make sure you are not just going to hang a Beatles White Album on your wall without a frame like I am proposing. Depending on the size of your wall you will need quite a few albums, so if you can find them for five cents a piece you are in good shape. Use goop off or another sticky remover to take off the label.

Pick out some nice looking screws or nails, meaning the head is a good size and attractive shape. From there just arrange them on the wall and make sure all the edges touch. The neatest part about this design is the negative space versus the positive space. Meaning the space between the albums can become the focus, the skewed diamond shape.

Depending on who holds the garage sale, you should be able to take recycled objects and make them something worth while. How have you used recycled objects in your interior?

What Was I Thinking?! My Bathroom Building Experience

We have the basement bathroom toilet installed. We could have just done a pedestal sink, but oh no. I wanted to have a cabinet so there could be storage for soap and toilet paper, some hand towels, you know the drill. And it couldn’t be just any cabinet; it had to be the one we used as our dry sink in the dining room before the new furniture because I am all about recycling and reusing everything I have. So we moved that bad boy to the basement and began the reworking.

There is the drilling of the hole in the top so the sink can discharge. Then there was the plumbing from the “Saniplus” system at a slight incline so we could determine where the plumbing would come up inside the cabinet. Then there was the connection between the bottom of the sink to the outflow pipe. Sounds easy right, well that part was, but because I wanted a glass sink to sit on the dry sink and a faucet that came out of the wall…things got a little tricky.

First, basement walls are typically poured concrete, so we built a fake wall. Now the wall couldn’t be a typical wall thickness because that would have made the room too narrow, so we built a 2” fake wall (just thick enough to hold the water lines). Because I wanted a faucet that came out of the wall, we had to figure out how to attach the faucet to a finished wall while having part of the wall unfinished to do the plumbing.

We dry walled only the top half of the wall. We attached the faucet to this part and dropped the flexible water lines down the wall. Have I told you how much I love flexible water lines? We would be still working on this job if we had to use rigid lines.

We then hooked up the water lines in the not yet dry walled area of our wall and proceeded to dry wall the lower part of our wall. That only took us a couple of weeks to figure out all of the parts and pieces to make it work.

The plumbing goes through one of the drawers in the dry sink, so we took the face off the drawer and permanently attached it to the dry sink.

Now I have 1 drawer and ½ of the dry sink for storage. It looks great and we have had a lot of complements on it. Have you ever thought up a project that ended up  taking a lot more effort and time than you originally thought it would? Tell me one of your “What was I thinking?!” projects.

Reclaimed Hardwood: Great For the Environment, but Is It Great For You?

Last year I was attended NEOCON in Chicago. This is an interior design industry event that brings together various (hundreds, in fact) manufacturers and allows them to strut their stuff for three days. This event is, for the most part, commercially focused, but there are always some products that will cross over to the residential realm.

NEOCON is held at the Merchandise Mart in downtown Chicago right on the river. The building is massive! I have heard that it is the largest building (by mass) in the US, but I am not sure if I believe that or not. Anyway, my firm gave all of us the challenge this particular year of going out in the Mart and finding the best ‘nugget’ we could. This artifact could be anything from a new type of seating, a new furniture system or a decorative finish. My love that day became a reclaimed wood manufacturer and refinisher.

I found Terra Mai tucked away with some other small companies on the 8th floor. I was awe struck by the rich tones and beauty of their wood samples lay over the carpet. I was thinking they were exotic red woods until I learned that they were all reclaimed species. Some of the materials and varieties available were old bleachers from high school gymnasiums. Another, which I fell in love with, was a series that gathered old fishing industry shipping crates, deconstructed them, cleaned, refinished and then resold the flooring. They called the product line “fishtail oak.” I cannot even describe how beautiful this was. It was as if every wood tone became compiled into one floor. There were hints of orange, red slices and yellow highlights. Absolutely gorgeous!

The pricing for such material is comparable to buying new hard wood at a premium. They have to cover the cost of collection, refinishing and shipping. It is also good to keep in mind that the inventory fluxes with what is found or available. There is a constantly updated website that allows for ease of shopping.

Do you think this is gross or something to be celebrated? I like the idea of my floor having a story. So if someone asks, there is a little more to say other than, “I bought it at Home Depot”. You can’t really recreate aged beauty, so why not let your floor have a few words of wisdom?

Reused Materials – A Bad Use or Reuse, or Smart Thinking?

We are not talking products that are recyclable here, nor are we discussing materials and products that contain recycled content (there is a difference!). Instead, I am talking about the world of down and dirty reuse. Reuse can be defined as taking a product, as is, and giving it another purpose. One of the best examples of this is “found art” – meaning taking a found object (aka garbage or waste) and mounting it and calling it art. I think that there is a chance to see the beauty in anything, but where do we draw the line?

I recently saw a video of green building initiatives in the city of Chicago. A few years back, the city funded a competition for creative sustainable housing. The video highlighted the most innovative house that was built and won the competition.

The house incorporated a mural wall of all clear glass bottles. These were used bottles that were identical, clean and (unexpectedly) filled with water. Due to the placement and orientation of the house, the wall was south facing and received the most natural light. The water is heated by the sun and then doubles as a passive heating system. Pretty cool.

So, in this instance, we have a reused product (bottle) that created a triple purpose of beauty (if you think so, I do), heating and reuse. After looking at the wall, it almost becomes a questions of why aren’t we doing this more? The second question that comes to mind is…who cleans the water? That could get pretty nasty.

A less classy example of reuse I recently saw was old road signs that were transformed into end tables. Once again, could this become an attractive show piece, or does it make the space take on a “dorm room” feel? I think the beauty is in the eye of the beholder. For how long have we all been purchasing jeans that already have holes manufactured into them? Why not buy old pants that get holes naturally?

So the next time you see brand new throw pillows for sale at Pottery Barn (or a store like it) at $50 a pop that are made from recycled potato sacks, think about this: are those pretty? Or are they a bad use of reuse?