“Demolish another building, it just gives us more to work with!”

John Stein is into demolitions, but not in the way one might think.  The founder and president of California-based Kirei USA has a knack for finding the possibilities inherent in the unwanted.

This vision shows clearly in every Kirei product, including the newest line, Windfall.  These engineered panels are produced in partnership with Windfall Lumber, which takes Douglas & Hemlock Fir from deconstructed buildings in the Pacific Northwest and brings the reclaimed wood to fresh, new life.

“It’s great to reuse demolition material that would otherwise take up space in the landfill,” says Mr. Stein.  “Having it become beautiful wood panels is even better.  This is old-growth wood that just can’t be found any more, and we get to bring it to designers.”

Windfall is manufactured in the United States using low-VOC adhesives.  The reclaimed wood is milled into strips of differing width, which are then randomly stacked to form the panels and cut to size.  Panels are available either solid or 3-ply with a NUAF/FSC-certified core.  They may come unfinished, with a clear coat that shows off the natural grain, or stained and prefinished in Anthracite, Mocha, Ivory, and Leather colors.  The result adds to any interior.

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There are modular homes and modular walls and modular floors…  but have you seen a modular plant?  No?  I hadn’t either.

But the clever folks at DIRTT Environmental Solutions looked into their imaginations and saw a vertical garden: rows and ranks of pretty, VOC-absorbing plants marching up any given wall.  Then Sustainable Industries looked at Breathe and named it one of the Top Ten Building Products of 2011.

So what is this thing? Read the rest of this entry »

Go to the local – or chain – hardware store and take a stroll to the paint section, where rows upon rows and literally thousands of color choices may await customers. What’s in that paint?  In many cases, that information can be more than difficult to unearth.

In the vast majority of cases the base material is latex, supplemented by a witch’s brew of chemicals to achieve consistency, color, and so forth, produced with petro-chemical or synthetic ingredients.  The result, whatever the formula, is often toxic.  Who wants that?

Florian Speier and Jessica Pfohl are among those looking for something more.  Out of frustration at the “greenwashing and lack of ingredient transparency in the paint industry,” the husband and wife team founded Unearthed Paints with the determination to help change the industry.

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The little wooden robot sits there, head cocked, arms outstretched, vacant drilled eyes staring into space.  Its expression is puzzled and innocent.  It looks like it wants a hug.  It’s cute.

Sometimes, in the earnest seriousness of striving to live green, we forget our sense of humor.  Marjolaine Poulin of M Design hasn’t forgotten… and she loves nothing better than to make other people smile, hence the little army of wooden robots marching out of her workshop in El Salvador.

Marjolaine (“Mao”) has taken scrap wood & discarded furniture and raised them both into art.

A native of Quebec, Canada, Mao splits her time between Montreal and El Salvador, always looking for inspiration.  Her introduction to woodworking came in 2004 in Guatemala, where she learned classical bamboo carpentry from a Taiwanese master.  Shortly afterward she began crafting her own designs hoping to promote bamboo’s many advantages as a building material in Central America.

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Although I no longer provide full service residential design, I do consult on projects for several general contractors and architects.   One such contractor I LOVE to work with is Wes Harding of Harding Construction and Sustainable Solutions.  His clients love him too, hence him and his team (including moi) being invited to a client’s house for dinner to celebrate a recently completed kitchen remodel.  And celebrate they should, because look where this project started…

This is before.  Isn’t that a weird location for the sink?  Not to mention the majorly blah nature of that white and beige scheme!

So look what we did….

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luminous  adj.  1. radiating or emitting light.  2. reflecting or  diffusing light.  3. intellectually brilliant

Sometimes an object is so stunning it can’t be properly caught on camera, and that is surely the case with Pietre Preziose, the latest surfacing material produced by the family-owned Italian firm, OKITE.  Pictures just don’t it justice.  As it is composed of natural quartz and resin, the translucent Pietre Preziose fills with ambient light from its environment and becomes truly luminous.  How brilliant is that?

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Image via Pinterest

Gray is the perfect neutral, but it can feel cold and lifeless on it’s own.  Yellow is cheerful and bright, but it can also seem like you decorated with your kids crayons when paired with other bight colors.  However, combine the two and you have a perfectly simple, yet strikingly sophisticated, color scheme.

Image via Sow Kindness, Gather Love

See what I mean?  That room is nothing but gray, except for two yellow pillows, a vase, and a few bright yellow chrysanthemums.  Imagine how blah that room would be without them! Read the rest of this entry »

I’m excited to announce that Emerald Atkins is joining The InterioREvolution as a regular contributor!  She has been writing occasional posts on artisan makers.  Now she is going to help me keep up with telling you about all the exciting products out there.  Twice a week!  Welcome Emerald!

These are luscious floors.

How often does one get the chance to say that about something under one’s feet?   Luscious.   Yet the creations of DuChateau Floors evoke that word, and in addition serve as a reminder that an environmentally-friendly room does not necessarily preclude classical beauty and – dare we say it? – a gentle opulence.

The secret is in the polish.  While polyurethane, acrylic, and aluminum finished floors are prevalent in the United States, DeChateau offers a refreshing alternative: a floor crafted of new FSC-certified European wood that is distressed, finished with hard wax oil, smoked, and brushed to reproduce that wonderful age-old, worn, antique patina that speaks of history. Read the rest of this entry »

Shhhh…

Hear that?

You don’t?

Perfect!

Milano Wall

That sound you don’t hear is Zephyr’s new Next Generation Europa line of range hoods.

Napoli Island

The reason you hear hardly a thing isn’t because the hood is so loud it drowns out your smoke alarm when you set the bacon on fire (come on, it’s happened to all of us, right?).  No, it’s because these range hoods are equipped with Zephyr’s DCBL™ Suppression technology.

What’s that you ask?  Well, let’s take a look under the hood, shall we?

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Thought I would give you a peak at the LEED Home Tour I participated in last Saturday.

This is the first tour for the Newport Beach Green Home.

As you can see, this project is still in the early stages of construction.

Man, have you ever seen more beautiful framing?  Seriously, this stuff is a work of art.  Almost a shame to cover it up with drywall.  Of course, if we didn’t, I sorta wouldn’t have a job, would I?

Lots of people showed up. Read the rest of this entry »