• EcoTop: a truly green countertop material that you can afford

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    Regular readers know that I’m not a fan of modern architecture, but that I love modern materials – especially those that aren’t visibly avant-garde and can work in old homes just as well as new. That is, green materials – not just greenwashed products, but truly enviro-neutral or -friendly materials. One of my pet peeves is building materials that are recycled or recyclable – one or the other – but not both; many of these materials are lauded in the popular press for being "ecological," but aren’t really.

    Joel Klippert, a young man living just outside of Seattle, has really turned this specific market around. With a little help from some very talented research chemists and materials scientists, he’s created the very  first recycled, renewable and fully-recyclable countertop material. EcoTop, a successor to his extremely successful PaperStone product, is 50% pulped bamboo paper fiber and 50% recycled wood – sometimes called "urban timber," the structural wood salvaged from demolished buildings. He’s worked for years to find a non-petroleum resin that was UV resistant, so that he could avoid using only dark colors (the resin used in earlier materials had to be dark to avoid the yellowish cast that would develop over years of sun exposure). Now that he’s found that and reliable sources for his two structural ingredients, EcoTop can hit the market – in a range of colors ranging from white to black, with an enormous range of shades of green, tan, red, brown and gray in between. In fact, Joel says he can match any PMS (Pantone Matching System) shade that a client can specify, if the order is large enough.

    EcoTop is not only a beautiful, extremely durable and truly green material – right at home in any kitchen or bath, new or old – it’s also really affordable and easy to install, competitive with natural stone and significantly less expensive than concrete installations. If anything, I think that materials like this are even more apropos in an Arts & Crafts home than stone or tile: their makers take their responsibility to the outside environment just as seriously as their responsibility to the inside of your home, something that is much more in line with the tenets of the movement than nonrecyclable materials which, no matter how green their production process, end up filling a landfill when you (or, in the case of something like EcoTop, which will last generations, when some far off future owners of your home) are done with them.

    Note that this material is also available as an exterior cladding for large residential and commercial / industrial applications.

  • Craftsman Kitchen Remodels III

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    Fourth in our series on kitchen remodels (and about the 25th article on the subject; previous episodes here), this time we’re taking a look at Southern California. High-end kitchens from the area’s best contractors, relatively inexpensive DIY projects and various steps in between:

    • La Jolla’s IS Architecture remodeled this 1914 Craftsman bungalow; the project included "a complicated pier foundation and seismic retrofit." Check out the before & after pictures of the kitchen & bath. They are also responsible for this very pretty coastal Craftsman and its blindingly-white kitchen in La Jolla and a very pretty wood-grain kitchen in this Spanish Revival ranch house in Rancho Santa Fe.
    • Qualified Remodeler magazine’s 2007 Chrysalis Awards – the 14th year these awards have been given to residential and commercial modelers across the country – include a number of great Southern California remodels. A lot of the remodels are pretty hideous, in my own opinion – cabinets that clash with the style of the house, ridiculous French and English country cottage motifs that are inconsistent with the house and neighborhood, things like that. I understand that designers have to do what owners want, but there’s no reason to submit that kind of work for an award. It’s not all overdone, glitzy and ridiculous, though; for example, the winner of the 2007 Best Whole House Remodel under $200,000 award, Moving Mountains Design in Pasadena, did a pretty good job.
    • Stefan Hammerschmidt remodeled his 1924 Venice bungalow, including a spare and functional kitchen. Check out the marble counters and the beautiful stove & giant range hood. Read more about it at the LA Times‘ great remodel-focused blog, Pardon Our Dust, by Kathy Price-Robinson. Another recent column looks at "the best-looking DIY kitchen (they’ve) seen yet." Now, why can’t some big fancy magazine or newspaper hire me to blog for them?
    • PaysonDenney Architects‘ website is a bit difficult to navigate, but the kitchen they produced for another Venice home (scroll down for photos) – right on that community’s Sherman Canal – is worth seeing. I only wish the photos were a bit bigger!
    • Nest Architecture built this "Rustic Canyon Retreat" for two Los Angeles clients; the kitchen, with its butcher block island and all-around windows, is bright & airy.

    photo via Pardon Our Dust

  • Squak Mountain Stone: recycled fibrous-concrete countertops

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    There are several different commercial formulations of concrete on the market for countertops, flooring and other interior architectural uses. Some are aerated or mixed by varying but mostly-similar techniques, some are molded or installed in different ways, and some are aerated, or treated with dyes or special sealants. But one in particular is as attractive as real stone, is made in a range of mineral shades and has a natural texture from inclusions such as recycled paper, glass and coal fly-ash.

    Squak Mountain Stone’s fibrous-cement material is beautiful and just as visually appealing as real stone – but it’s a truly environmentally-friendly countertop that makes great (re)use of some otherwise-ignored ingredients. It is available both in slabs and as tiles, and the maker is happy to work with clients on custom applications and mixtures. In that respect, it’s even more appealing than real or manufactured stone!

    According to developer and owner Ameé Quiriconi, the ingredients list reads like a how-to book for those interested in establishing a truly green, environmentally-friendly business:

    • Fly-ash is generated at a Washington-state coal-fired electrical generation facility. It’s collected and bagged for sale in Seattle.
    • The mixed waste paper comes from a small home-based document destruction business staffed by four young women with developmental disabilities (with the help of a job coach and the women’s parents.)This business is located in Issaquah, WA.
    • The recycled glass is mainly waste from local window manufacturers that is collected and processed by a local glass recycling company.

    We’ve put together a whole Flickr album of high-res images showing the product in use – if you are planning a kitchen or bath remodel, you really should take a look at this material before you finalize your countertop material plans.

    It is available from retailers up and down the west coast, including Green Sacramento, Ecohome Improvement in Berkeley, Greenspace in Santa Cruz, Eco Design Resources in San Carlos as well as EcoSpaces in Telluride, Colorado.