I love tile.

I LOVE this.

Created by Everitt and Schilling of reclaimed wood from barns or building scrap, these tiles are both beautiful and functional.

Wood can lend such warmth and texture to a wall – even when it is just a small section.

Of course, you can go for the whole enchilada too!

Focusing on the DIY contingent, Everitt & Schilling sells by the square foot through their Etsy store.  Might be fun to order a couple of square feet to play with…

Thanks for visiting!

Rachel

No, it’s not their presence in a landfill.  Not if Fireclay Tile has any say in the matter.

Since its founding in 1986 the San Jose, CA, company has striven to minimize its environmental impact.  The product is hand-molded from extruded clays using recycled materials, unprocessed stoneware clays, and minerals, so each tile has its own natural character.  Glazes are mixed in-house and never contain any lead material.

Fireclay recycles its kiln heat, water, and all manufacturing waste, which is then re-used in other parts of the business.  99% of all scrap clay is recycled back into new tile and 80% of all glaze over-spray is collected and recycled.  Waste not, want not.

In particular they produce two tile lines to which I’d like to draw your attention.

The first, Crush Recycled Glass Tile, is 100% post-consumer glass taken from curbside recycling programs.  The tile comes in glossy or matte finish and is available in 17 different size formats, including field (square or rectangular), rounds, triangles, diamonds, hexagons, mosaic sheets, rails, and three types of borders.  Customers can choose from a range of 40 colors.  This handmade tile can be substituted for ceramic & natural stone products in most applications and is ideal for projects seeking LEED certification.

The second, Debris Series Recycled Tile, has a more complex story.

Like Crush, Debris is produced using locally-sourced post-consumer waste glass.  It also contains reclaimed porcelain and granite dust, which is a by-product of industrial asphalt production.  Altogether these materials combine to give Debris a whopping 70% recycled material content – not only reserving hundreds of tons a year from the local landfills but also halving the energy use required to make conventional tile.  Wow!

Debris comes in 112 natural, lead-free glaze colors.  It is offered in field sizes ranging from 1”x2” to 12”x12”, along with a large selection of trim, moldings, raised and relief tiles, and also hand-painted Cuerda Seca tile.

Alongside the company’s environmental commitment the people of Fireclay strive to “give back” to their community by means of product donations, ceramic teaching programs, and factory tours for students.  The company also seeks non-profit organizations which can put secondary and overstock tile to good use.

But check them out for yourself.  There’s a lot to learn on the Fireclay website , and their Inspiration Gallery is just that.

~ Emerald

Happily, my doctors have figured out how to bring me back to 100%.  I feel GREAT!

Now comes the tough part – getting caught up!  So, in the interest of keeping my clients, editors, friends and family happy, today’s post is short.

Really short….

Behold!

My current favorite tile.  Oceanside Glasstile’s Muse Ovation in Tidepool.

The End.

Thanks for visiting,

Rachel

to very pretty…

Replacing old, worn-out, water hogging toilets is considered a “green” thing to do.  But have you ever wondered what happens to all those relics of the 5+ gallons a flush era when they are taken out?  Sadly, many wind up in landfills, but the lucky ones wind up as beautiful tile from Fireclay!

Part of Fireclay’s Debris Series, these tiles contain over 60% recycled material, including glass, gravel and the aforementioned porcelain.  Don’t you think “porcelain” sounds a lot better than “toilets”?  It is actually a more accurate term anyway, as the porcelain mix includes ground up sinks too.

Hmm…  Maybe I should have titles this post “Everything AND the kitchen sink”.

Anyhoodle,… I love that these tiles are available in a host of sizes and shapes, as well as 112 lead free colors, making them applicable to just about any tile project.

In fact, a client of mine suggested these for her project, and although we wound up going for a non-tile backsplash (more on that later this week), I was impressed with the samples they sent and the customer service they showed my client.  Always a big plus, don’t you think!

Penny rounds, and their design sibling “hex tile”, have been around for over a century, as anyone who has been in the lobby of the old apartment building, or the bathroom in an older home would know. Recently there has been a revival in interest for penny rounds, whether for reasons of nostalgia or the fact that just so darn cheerful looking. The great thing is, they can also be very sustainable. Here are some of my favorite looks:

image via Apartment Therapy

I’ll start out with, Savoy, a pretty ceramic version with over 20% recycled content from Ann Sacks.

Daltile makes a simple, classic version in porcelain. In this image you can really see the versatility of a tile with such a small scale.  Great for curved surfaces!

Ann Sacks also makes a beautiful version in matte glass.  I’ve seen this installed and it is just luminous!

One of my all-time favorite materials is cork, and it just happens to make some of the best penny tile of all. Cut from discarded wine corks, these tiles are sustainable in so many ways.  I’ve installed this before, and it really does work as well as they say. Believe it or not, it’s put in just like any other tile, grout and all. Just seal it with a few coats of water-based urethane and you have yourself a durable flooring that can even be used in a shower.

image via Apartment Therapy

Of course if you want to be literal about it, you could actually make penny rounds out of pennies, as was done at New York’s Standard Hotel. Penny rounds usually come pre-spaced on mesh sheets, but I have to imagine some poor installers had to actually lay these out individually.

image via Apartment Therapy

Penny tile not doing it for you? How about nickel tile? Talk about one-upsmanship, this installation is more of a five-upmanship.

Penny Rounds are definitely a fun look, as well as a nice nod to the past, but do keep in mind that the smaller the tile, the greater quantity of grout will make up your floors surface. If you have grout issues, and many people do, this look may not be for you.

These beautiful Valley tiles by ModCraft are a perfect example of an old color looking new again. Although brown glazed tile was ubiquitous back to the 70s, paired with today’s crisp white fixtures it feels completely fresh and exciting again.  Doesn’t the luminous quality of this particular glaze highlight the dimensionality of the tile perfectly?  Gorgeous!

Industrial designer David Clark’s passion for modern, handmade tile shows in the striking modular designs he creates in his Hudson Valley barn studio.

By reusing clay and glaze to reduce waste, and packing of of their products in recycled cardboard and cornstarch peanuts, ModCraft strives to reduce their impact on the environment. All of their tile is lead free, and made of non-toxic components.

ModCraft also makes a line of cute salt-and-pepper shakers, and some handsome porcelain lighting, amongst other great things you should check out.

So, what 70′s color do you find yourself looking at in a new light?

Campaign Desk in “Revolution Red” by Etsy seller abodewell, made of reclaimed wood.

Hand embroidered pillow by Lost City.

Oceanside Glasstile in Red.

Harmony Art’s organic cotton fabric in 40 Ginkgos.

Recycled glass vase from Spain.

Graham & Brown’s paint in Double Decker Red.

My best wishes for a very Happy Valentine’s Day for all my wonderful readers (who put up with so much).  Now, go out there and stuff your faces with chocolate!  It’s really what today is all about – right?

OK.  Ha ha.  Giggle giggle.  Yeah, I said I love “wood”.  Whatever.

Anyway, I do, so this gorgeous wood tile, new this year from Ann Sacks, has my heart singing.

Called the Bosque Collection, the tiles come in several different lengths and widths.  You can also choose from three different thicknesses, enabling you to mix and match for a more textured look on your wall.  And best of all…?

All the wood used is FSC certified, so you know it it is truly sustainable.  There are three different species to choose from: Eastern Black Walnut, Brazilian Cherry Jatoba, and Caribbean Teak Chichipate.

Wait… “Chichipate”???  I think I need to get some of that tile up on my walls, just so I can invite people over to my house for mojitos and coyly say, “have I shown you my Chichipate?”

Ahem.  On second thought, that might be a bit much, even for me.

To learn more about Ann Sacks Bosque collection, as well as their other tiles with a bit of eco creed, visit their “eco thinking” page.

The DIY Channel’s new show, “This New House” premieres tonight, July 29th, at 8PM/7C.  If the trailer for the series is any indication, it should be chock full of innovative, high tech products, many of them geared towards energy savings and other aspects of green living.

One of the projects highlighted in the first three episodes is the Cleantech Teaching Center, a state of the art showcase home located in Beverly, MA.  This house features an entirely LED lighting system, rainwater recovery system, geothermal energy, and solar photovoltaic panels.  Sustainable materials were used throughout the interior, including Trend USA’s lovely Trend Q recycled glass tile.  Cleantech Homes, LLC has applied for LEED PLatinum status for the home.

Here is a synopsis of the first episode of the show, titled “Folding Houses” -

This episode is set at the Cleantech House in Beverly, Mass., a showcase of the latest in energy-saving design. Host Kevin O’Connor visits Blu-Homes, a Waltham, Mass., company that’s trying to deliver on the promise of prefab housing by making buildings that fold up for shipping. Licensed contractor and host Amy Matthews goes to Las Vegas, Nev., to see a Department of Energy project that brings a 1960s home up to net-zero modern standards. Kevin explains energy-recovery ventilators and Amy discovers Accoya, a treated wood that lasts for 50 years without needing paint or stain. Kevin goes to the NuCedar factory in Chicopee, Mass., to sees how PVC siding is made. At the International Builders’ Show in Las Vegas, Amy is off to see a P-trap sink drain that never clogs.

Sounds pretty cool.  I’m familiar with the treated Accoya wood, which is a pretty nifty product, and I’m really curious to find out more about the folding pre-fab houses.  Unfortunately, the DIY Channel is a premium channel on our system, and we’ve never bothered to upgrade since we don’t watch a ton of TV (Yeah, I know that’s kinda green living of us, but in truth, it’s as much about being too busy with work as it is anything more noble).  In any case, if you have a chance to watch it, please let us know what you think in the comments below.  Meanwhile, I’ll see if I can catch up with it some other way.

Mosaic “wallpaper” by Trend USA

1.  Recycled glass takes only 50% of the energy to produce that virgin glass does.

Oceanside Glasstile

2.  Recycled glass  can be made into any form, color, or shape you can imagine.

Bedrock Industries

3.  Glass is truly recyclable, meaning it can be recycled over and over and over again without losing quality.  Paper and many metals can only be recycled a certain number of times before they become unusable (in their original form) due to contaminants or loss of structural integrity.  Plastic is even worse, as it can only be downcycled, meaning it must be converted into a lesser form from the very beginning.

Stone & Pewter

4. Recycled glass is versatile.  It can be used anywhere that ceramic tile can be used, such as walls, countertops, showers, fountains and pools.  It can even be used for flooring.

Hakatai

5.  Every ton of 50% recycled glass saves 250 tons of mining waste.  Imagine the savings when it’s 100% recycled!

Sandhill

6.  Recycled glass is inert, meaning it won’t affect indoor air quality, or add contaminants or chemicals to the interior environment.

So have I got you interested?  Good!  Now, here are a few more things you should know before you run out and replace that grubby old bathroom countertop:

• The post consumer recycled content of glass tiles can vary anywhere from 100% down to about 30%.  Most companies make the information available to you on their website or in information sheets and catalogs, but if you don’t see it anywhere, don’t hesitate to ask.
• Even though recycled glass takes a lot less energy to produce than virgin glass, there is still a significant amount of heat and energy needed to reform it.  Check with the company you’re considering to see if they have any programs in place to either reduce or offset the energy they use in production.
• Recycled glass is BEAUTIFUL.  That being said, it’s typically made using processes that allow for some flaws, bubbles and other quirks of production, so you should enjoy a little “character” in your tile.
• All of the recycled glass tile companies I have highlighted above are located in the United States, although a few of them actually manufacture in other countries.  If you are in another country and know of a good local source for recycled glass tile that you would like to share, please let us know in the comments below.  I love hearing about new sources for good things.