Offgrid had a great article this week about things people can do to live greenly without resorting to cave dwelling or making your own shoes from animal skins you’ve carefully saved from hunting.

It drives home the valid point that a green house doesn’t necessarily look any different from a non-green house. Sure, we prefer a simple geometry, clean line design in our own work, but there are a lot of things that green up a house regardless of style.

• minimal eave overhang of 1′. More overhang is better – it shields heat gain in the summer and can lengthen the lifespan of siding and exterior finishes
• smaller is better: in 1977 the average home size was 1700 SF. Today it’s 2500. As we’ve said so many times, bigger = more to heat/cool, clean, furnish, collect crap. You can only be in one room at a time. If you use a room once a year, consider converting another room temporarily for that once a year use.
• kitchens should match how you cook. (This is where we come in!) If you’re a microwave, wolf-it-down-out-of-the-package type, don’t have a kitchen that has 3 ovens and takes up 500SF! And if you do like to cook at home, have a kitchen that has enough space and the right equipment to work for you.

The article also goes on to mention tips on insulation, renewable options, and natural ventilation. This section especially cracked me up:

What good are solar panels and recycled woods tacked on to a McMansion? Fact is, the sustainable homes of the future look a lot like those of the past.

For starters, the obvious:

• cooking, baking, steaming, sauteeing, marinading, mixing, frying, etc.
• doing the dishes
• putting away groceries
• figuring out what to eat
• socializing

Hold the phone – let’s look at that last one: socializing. Pretty broad. It could also be any number of things having nothing to do with food. Like reviewing a business plan. Or talking about the latest work drama. Or brainstorming ways to knit a tighter community. Or figuring out how to make money from timeshare cemetery plots. Or sorting beads.

Intersections of Food and Activity X

So there’s the non-food related things that happen in the kitchen. Then there’s all those combinations of food and something else. How about book club, or wine tasting? Maybe a recipe club? And now that wireless internet connectivity is pretty pervasive, there’s surfing, emailing, maybe even a video phone call to the sweetie in the Netherlands. It could also be planning meals for the week so the dreaded re-run conversation doesn’t happen: (“What do you want for dinner?”, “I don’t care. What do you want?”)

Parties always end up in the kitchen.

Why? It’s intimate, but not uncomfortably confined. It’s closer to the beer. It’s closer to the food. There are places to sit if you feel like it, stand if you don’t. There’s a place to put your drink and plate. And a few intangible reasons that I can’t articulate at the moment. Like, it relaxes people to be somewhere that work happens, but isn’t happening right then. It’s informal somehow. Or something.

Does your kitchen lend itself comfortably to what happens in it?

[thanks to Nashville's matthewmichaelphoto.com for the front page photo!]

• it’s cheaper than eating out
• no searching for a parking place
• no waiting in the lobby with a blinking pager
• it doesn’t matter that tipping isn’t a city in China
• clothes are not required
• it contributes less to global warming
• your friends will be impressed by your meal making skills and foodie knowledge
• the ingredients of what you’re eating are identifiable
• you can drink while cooking
• you can cook while drinking
• there is no mind boggling number crunching when it comes time to split the check 3 ways
• it gives you much needed practice toward Iron Chef America 2009
• you can show off your awesome kitchen designed by eco-modernism

Ok there’re actually way more than 13 reasons. Like not having to carry a tray. And not having to placate unruly insatiable customers. And you can go to your own bathroom. And the dog can hang out with you. And you can use the appliances you want when & where you want them. And make your friends envious of a well designed place to entertain dinner guests.

If it works well, it’s fun to use. Get it designed right, then be your own star.

DESU Design just goes to show that simple, beautiful and green can coexist beautifully. The Inversion Bowl (left) is made of certified renewable cellulose fiber and resin. The white material for HUG (right) is similar to Corian or Avonite, and looks equally clean & elegant.

The usual margins of accuracy aside, general rules of thumb for renovating a kitchen are as follows:

Facelift to Sell: If you’re sprucing up the kitchen to sell your home, you should budget about 5% of the overall value of the home. So, for a $300,000 home, that’s about $15,000. What can you do for that?

• Replace countertops. Maybe you want to update plastic laminate and go for engineered stone like quartz ($45-90/SF) or something like concrete ($80-100/SF).
• Replace fixtures and appliances. A new sink, faucet, dishwasher, microwave, range, cooktop, fridge and oven could easily run anywhere from$5,000 up for all of them.
• Paint. Paint is the cheapest way to improve any room in your home, including the kitchen. Under $200 buys 4 $40/gallon cans.
• Cabinet hardware. You could change out knobs and drawer pulls for $100 +/-, depending on how many you have. As an example, figure about $5-6 each if you go with stainless. Prices vary wildly, just remember you get what you pay for and it looks like it.
• Lighting. Replace any burned out bulbs, and make sure there is plenty of light. You can update a light fixture or two for anywhere from $100 up. Again, you get what you pay for, and even though it looks semi-ok to you, a discriminating buyer will definitely notice.

Staying 5 years or more: If you’re going to stick around – say, you love the neighborhood, the neighbors, the location, and you are just a s happy to stay, you can spend up to 25% of the overall home value. So for that same $300,000, that’s a whopping $75,000. That’s a very nice budget for a kitchen, & you could pretty much update everything, including flooring and backsplash tiles if you wanted.

What’s the Return on Investment?

This one is tougher to gauge, and depends on many variables. You probably won’t get your project money back if you put $30,000 into a kitchen renovation in a $100,000 home. Depending on other factors like location and comparables in the area, you can recover anywhere from 75 – 100% of the project cost. In other cases, a kitchen renovation can add up to 15% to the total home value.

A kitchen update can make or break a deal: a buyer might come in & fall in love with it and that’s what they want. Then again, someone could come in and open the cabinet to look at the construction, and see that there are new doors on the cabinets but the boxes are unchanged. Or, maybe it’s too dark or cramped. Those all scream “money pit”. And though it can be a negotiation point for the price, it probably means work for the buyer sooner rather than later. Moving is work enough without having to jump right in to a construction project.

Bottom line, for folks who want to update and stay, the average kitchen renovations can run between about $19,000 and $50,000.

This project involved the redesign of the Master Bath and the Kitchen for a condo in a multi unit building. Aside from the overall need to update the two rooms (it had been 10 years unchanged), improvements were needed to make daily life more enjoyable. Here’s how it broke down:

MASTER BATH DESIGN GOALS

• increased privacy & create a true master suite
• increased vanity width
• wall mounted vanity cabinet
• linen storage
• walk in shower with a built in shelf for soaps, shampoos, razors, etc.

KITCHEN DESIGN GOALS

• increased circulation
• increased storage
• more oven capacity
• cooktop
• integrated bar & counter surface

COMPLETED DESIGN SUMMARY

The Master Bath:

• it’s bigger
• has more storage
• is no longer a walk-through room
• vanity cabinet is wall mounted for easier reach of stored items and ease of floor cleaning
• vanity area is now wide enough to comfortably accommodate two people
• shower is slightly larger, is walk-in and has a built-in shelf
• there is extra storage above the toilet for linens and other supplies

The Kitchen:

• delineates the entire right column bay as food related areas
• is no longer a dead end: there is ample circulation space within and around it. Not only does it allow for free movement in multiple paths, but it also allows for full operability of doors and drawers without interfering with the units opposite.
• there are no corner cabinets, which are not as efficient for storage access or capacity as galley style cabinet layouts are.
• more linear footage of storage
• more counter surface area
• much more eco friendly than previous kitchen with no formaldehyde cabinets, recycled & recycleable materials, low flow fixtures and LED lighting

MATERIALS AND APPLIANCE SPECS

• dishwasher: Thermador HD, stainless
• refrigerator: KitchenAid Profile, stainless
• microwave: LG, stainless
• cooktop: Electrolux Icon
• wall ovens: Thermador
• countertops: bathroom: quartz: IceStone, StarOn or equivalent; kitchen: reclaimed wood or bamboo
• cabinets: 5/8″ green plywood boxes with green MDF doors and blum hardware
• tile: recycled glass mosaic
• paint: zero VOC Yolo and AFM safecoat
• faucets & fixtures: low flow, Toto
• lighting: under cabinet: LED strips, cable LED’s above kitchen; bathroom: LED cans

[where: 27603]