I learn so much from my clients!

A current one told me about this local company called Bountiful Backyards, which installed a bunch of fruit trees, edible landscape and some water management things on their property. They don’t have to mow their front yard, AND they can eat the blueberries and other fruit from their new trees!

Drool control needed

Ok so it’s possible that coming off my weekly 24 hour fast has a teeny bit to do with it, but every food item pictured in the header on the Bountiful Backyards site looks delicious.  They specialize in edible landscapes, and they are right down the road from us!

It’s a system

Believers that everything is connected, Bountiful Backyards takes a holistic approach to helping folks learn to grow their own, & include multiple areas of expertise:

• Food Production
• Soil Restoration
• Native and Beneficial Flowering Plants
• Water Management and Conservation
• Working with what you have

Whatever tack you want to take, they work with you to cultivate a regenerative ecological design and restoration project, large or small.

Why?

If not mowing isn’t enough to convince you, maybe 10 good reasons to opt for a garden over grass will. Reason #1 is my favorite:

1. Americans spend $30 billion every year to maintain 23 million acres of lawn. That’s an average of $1200 per acre, per year. The same sized area could still provide a beautiful space for recreation and feed a family of six if converted to edible landscaping as opposed to traditional landscaping.

Just ask Edith Zimmerman.  I have to say my favorite is the Alien Autopsy. Even so, there’s also, “Are you there, God? It’s me, Mantis.” At left.

What can I say – when the going gets tough, the tough crack jokes.

I got sent to bed early many times for silliness at the dinner table. It didn’t cure me; I’ve been known to make sculptures out of the canned cranberry sauce at holiday meals.

In the NY Times Home & Garden section this week, there was a small article on another recycled aggregate concrete countertop option: Eco, by Cosentino. If you’re like everyone else, if you hear the words ‘green’, ‘eco’ or ‘environmentally friendly’ you’re pretty much ready to gouge your eyes out with a rusty spoon. Me too.

So why is this a good thing?

Short of living in the woods naked while growing our own food and never going anywhere, pretty much anything we do is going to have some kind of impact on the planet. Minimizing the impact is the greenest thing we can do.

For a long time now, recycled building materials have had a higher price point than conventional materials. Even this ECO product is priced in the $68 – 118/SF range. But many concrete products out there have come down to the $50-60/SF range, like New River Concrete Countertops.

Granite has come down in price to as low as $45/SF in some cases. But granite isn’t green. Unless you wait around another 4.5 billion years, the earth isn’t making any more of it. And getting it to the project site isn’t green, either. I personally shy away from granite because everyone and their brother has it, & I’m allergic to the beaten path.

Mainstream hope for green

Preferences aside, it’s an excellent sign that places like Lowe’s are picking up these products. Even IKEA added DuPont’s Zodiaq Quartz product to their countertop options. Very, very good news for two reasons:

1. These products are pushing into the mainstream market, where many people get exposed to them without a lot of sales pressure in a showroom, and see they are within reach of their budget.
2. The availability of these products in the big boxes and affordable marketplaces will begin to drive down the price of green materials industry-wide. In turn, green will start to overtake the conventional materials market.

Good for the wallet, good for the planet. If every material has its drawbacks, why not go green anyway? At the very least you’ll sleep better. Even if you’re not under a tree.

Save the date!

Raleigh’s Annual Tour of Urban Chickens and their Coops is scheduled for May 16. It’s from 10am – 4pm, rain or shine, at several neighborhoods inside Raleigh’s 440 Beltline. Raleigh’s chicken owners invite you into their backyards for a first hand look at keeping chickens in an urban environment. From the Tour d’Coop site:

Discover the variety of breeds that might be nesting in your neighborhood, learn about raising chickens, and see how families integrate chickens into their gardening practices. In addition, you’ll be impressed by the ingenious coops that can be devised to shelter these feathered pets.

Previous years’ Tours have been huge successes, with hundreds of visitors enjoying the event. This year’s tour will be better than ever, including new coops and informational booths.

Tickets / Admission

Tickets are available only on the day of the tour. They can be picked up at the following locations:

Steven B. Andreaus, DDS , PA: 1637 Glenwood Avenue , across from the Rialto Theater
Ornamentea: 509 N. West Street, one block south of Peace Street
CupAJoe: 2109-142 Avent Ferry Road, in the lower level of Mission Valley Shopping Center
Whole Foods Market: 3540 Wade Avenue, in the Ridgewood Shopping Center
Seaboard ACE Hardware: 802 Semart Drive, across from Logan ‘s Nursery

Bring a non-perishable food item and/or a money donation to the following locations for a ticket and coop location map. 100% of the food and money collected goes to Urban Ministries of Wake County.

Worthy Cause

Last year’s tour, the 3rd annual, raised over $3000 and 1600 pounds of food!  As advocates of responsible urban living & consumption, we’re excited about the tour & happy to help Urban Ministries, especially in this tough economic climate.

See you there!

From 1940  to 2009

We’re updating a kitchen in a 1940′s house that currently has solid pine paneling. The room gets fantastic light, as it faces south, but the paneling is quite dark & the room is already fairly tight. So we’re taking most of the paneling out & replacing with wallboard. The flooring is sheet vinyl which has held up amazingly well, but the pattern is dated & we’re going with a modern look & opening up the kitchen to the dining area.

Specs

Demo is in about 2 weeks, & I’ll be collecting pictures. Until then, here’s a rundown of what’s tentatively going in:

• IKEA cabinets w/ NEXUS birch veneer doors and STRECKET pulls
• Countertops: Cloud White Zodiaq quartz from IKEA
• Flooring: Natural Cork Roca Eco Series or Woven Vinyl from Design Materials Inc
• Backsplash: Hakatai Crimson/China blend mosaic
• stainless & black appliances
• LED under cabinet and above cabinet uplighting – DIODER from IKEA

The warmth will come from the birch veneer and the cork flooring, lighting, accessories like utensils & towels, the red in the backsplash, dinnerware, and food itself.

Stay tuned for updates!

Remodeling!

Sarah Susanka’s new book, Not So Big Remodeling is now available in hardcopy & getting good reviews. The message? Improve the space you have. And a great endorsement of IKEA for kitchens in USA Today:

“You can save thousands of dollars” by using simple materials in a well-designed space, says Susanka

[Photo credits: Randy O'Rourke, Sarah Susanka]

NOTE: 2009 Pre-scheduled Ikea run dates have changed.

Simple + Functional IS Beautiful.

Always has been. We’ve featured DESU Design products before. Check out their spice racks. One piece of steel for each of these designs. I’m such a sucker for elegance & simplicity. Either of these would look fantastic on a mosaic tiled wall. On any wall, really.

If I had to choose, I’d go with the Aperture model. I’m hopelessly klutzy in the kitchen and I could see myself knocking everything off the the 1 Line. It would be easy to stack multiples of the Aperture model, too.

After the lights go out, what do you do?

• have a drum circle
• enjoy the stars
• brush up on your braille :)
• play poker with glow-in-the-dark cards
• grill out
• take a walk with the dog
• organize a neighborhood bike ride
• meditate
• do fun things in the dark with your sweetie

From the Is My Blog Burning blog:

At 8:30pm on Saturday 28 March millions of people around the world will unite and switch off their lights for one hour, Earth Hour.

I am challenging all bloggers to take part in an Earth Hour food blogging event.

Cook a recipe that
- you can enjoy by candle light and
- has a low carbon footprint (ie made from locally sourced ingredients and minimal packaging).

The biggest source of pain during a kitchen renovation isn’t the amount of money it costs. It’s the amount of time the owners must live without a functioning kitchen.

6 to 12 WEEKS????

The average kitchen renovation project takes from 6 weeks to 3 months. That’s a long time to be without a kitchen. Bathroom updates are different, because there is usually more than one bathroom in a house. So while one gets refurbished, the other is still usable. But there’s only one kitchen, so the inconvenience factor of going without is much higher.

Think it wouldn’t be so bad? Try going an entire weekend – from Friday night until Monday morning – without setting foot in your kitchen. Then multiply that amount of time by about 20. That’s how long it would be.

Antidote: Ecomod’s Extreme Kitchen Makeover Package

For the sanity of all involved, and in our never ending pursuit of efficiency on all fronts, I’m proud to announce our new guaranteed complete kitchen remodel in 2 weeks. Yep – all physical construction done in 2 weeks, which includes:

• demolition, hauling old cabinets, finishes & appliances offsite, donating where possible
• patch & repair of surfaces in prep for new finishes
• plumbing, electrical & mechanical as necessary
• installation of flooring
• assembly & installation of cabinets & lighting
• finish application

Fine Print?

There is one caveat where we will not guarantee the 2 week completion, & that is if we discover extensive damage from water or insects during the construction process. Reparation of such damage can take weeks.

Cost: our 2 week guaranteed completion time is an additional $1500. If we don’t finish in 2 weeks, we guarantee 100% to be finished in one month, AND we’ll refund your $1500 fee.  That would cover all those meals you’ll be eating out while you’re waiting for your new kitchen.

We think you will agree it’s a small price to pay for peace of mind, and ultimately of home.