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You May See This Bungalow in Bungalow Heaven
A few odds and ends have caught my eye over the past week, and I thought I would combine them all into one blog post, and clean house so to speak. Most of the items relate to blog posts I have recently done and are still fresh in my mind.
Tough Times For Going Green
I wrote a blog post on my own struggles with going green during an old house restoration, and trying to maintain a budget at the same time. We know builders and contractors are hurting, but I think we sometimes forget about all of the businesses that are dependent on the construction industry. The Wall Street Journal recently had an article on Sustainable Northwest Wood, a lumber yard in Portland, Oregon that specializes in selling green lumber. Everything they sell is FSC certified, and many of the small lumber mills in the surrounding area are dependent on the orders that Sustainable Northwest Wood places. Unfortunately with the downturn, the lumber yard has lost a lot of business, and their continued operation is in question. If you live near Portland and you need green lumber, give them a visit.
I was on Matt Grocoff’s Greenovation.TV site recently, and there is a great video on a product called Urban Wood. The partnership involved takes dead or damaged trees, and rather than putting them into a wood chipper, or using them for firewood, they make furniture and other products out of them. The trees all come from urban areas around Ann Arbor, Michigan, and while it isn’t the same type of reclaimed wood my blog post was about, it’s the same principle and a really great idea. Check out Urban Wood.
Old House Fairs
Spring really is the time for old house fairs; it seems like I am seeing another one advertised every week. For all of those who enjoyed my blog post on bungalows, there is an old house fair spotlighting bungalows in Pasadena, California on April 25. The fair is held annually in Bungalow Heaven, listed in the National Register of Historic Places. It’s a neighborhood of over 800 homes built between 1900-1930 .
Jumping to the other side of the country, there is an old house fair in Warwick, Rhode Island on May 15, and there is supposed to be old house restoration experts on hand to answer questions about houses built between 1700 and 1940. That pretty much covers just about any old house in this country.
Back to the West Coast, there is the old house fair in San Diego on June 19 that I mentioned several weeks ago, and what looks to be a large old house fair in Portland, Oregon on June 27. The fair in Portland is being put on by the Architectural Heritage Center, and looks to have some very good lectures scheduled. Actually, if you attend this old house fair you can double up, and go by Sustainable Northwest Wood to pick up some green lumber.
