Going Green and Saving Some Green Too

OK, let me start by noting that we are going to try to be as green as possible. Not windmills & solar panels but we will do what we can. Going that kind of green cost green.... but we will do what we can!

Today we dropped the baby off at my mother in laws & loaded our 10 and 8 year old girls up & visited a place called Green Demolition in Bethel, NY. http://www.greendemolitions.org/
What this place is is basically donations from extremely wealthy people, contractors, organizations of "old", left over or surplus of kitchens, bathrooms, light fixtures, appliances, windows, doors, etc. People who do renovations would rather see someone get use out of something that still has so much life in it than throw it in a landfill & we are all for this!

They had 50 thousand dollar kitchens that you would never know weren't new complete with granite, appliances, sinks, faucets & more for around 4 grand. None of them were older than 3 years. Some of the appliances in some of the kitchens still had the warranties in effect.

Luxurious bathtubs that we, the adults, could actually fit in 100 bucks, (not exactly earth friendly on water, I know, but how often does a mother of 3 get to relax in the tub??Just knowing I could if I wanted to is enough for me) Kohler pedestal sinks 40bucks, chandeliers that would normally run you in the thousands 100-500 bucks. You cant beat it & if you don't tell anyone, they would never know.

This is important to us because we need to basically GUT the house & our budget isn't exactly that of the Rockefeller's, so we need to cut costs where we can. Plus we are saving the earth & our bank account. Win-Win! As the man in the store said, "this place is for a beer budget with champagne taste..." and I am OK with that.

We have been looking into a lot of things like that. Pat knows wood, that is his job, so he keeps finding places that sell all sorts of reclaimed wood, wood we can frame with, wood he can use some machine he has & make wainscoting out of, wood to build me the ten thousand built in's I want. This too cut costs & luckily he knows if its crap or is fine...

Speaking of wood, the house already comes with a wood stove... Something I, unfortunately, am all too familiar with from last winter. Yes they save lots of money seeing how we live in the woods & well wood is in abundance for us. Our best friends have a 300 acre farm with no shortage of fallen trees perfect to cut up for this. But last year I had migraines everyday from it & we always smelled like a campfire. Hopefully this one since its located in the basement wont present the same problem. But it does have a wood shoot from the garage so I wont have to walk outside everyday to get wood, which is a plus!

Contractors all the time have too many windows left over on job sites, brand new in the box that the client already paid for in the cost of the job... They obviously take these with them & then can sell them yet again for nearly nothing since its all profit to them. This is perfect seeing as how there was a fire in the house we purchased & the firemen broken all the windows to ventilate the house. It also will get us some money back on our taxes for purchasing & installing energy star rated windows and doors!

We even found a way to make counter tops that are gorgeous, they are Mosaic, out of broken glass in cement. Since we have a friend who owns a winery I am thinking massive amounts of glass that we can break may not be that difficult to come across...

Here is an example of what I am talking about...


We save thousands on labor because my hubby will be breaking his back to do this & calling in EVERY favor owed to him!

As far as my part in it goes.....

I love, love, love old furniture.. Wood furniture the most, nothing gives me more satisfaction that to take a sturdy piece of wood furniture & give it life again. Even reupholstering a chair makes me smile... You can find gorgeous pieces at yard sales, craigslist, http://www.freecycle.org/, consignment shops, thrift stores and flea markets for hardly a fraction of what we pay for that press board crap everything seems to be made out of.

Recently, my mom bought the most beautiful area rug, it is huge at least 12x12, thick & gorgeous for 30 bucks at a consignment shop we love in Middletown NY. I have never set my bare feet on a more plush area rug. I get it from her, we can go into places that most people would say, ah this is all crap & it might be but you have to look, sometimes dig through the crap for that one thing that once you see it you know you HAVE to have.

If you are thrifty which I have to be, you can do your whole house for pennies...
(They really need to update that saying to dollars)

Off track for a moment but I want to talk about it.....

Like my dining room, it has a "gallery" wall of all black & white photos. When I started out making this wall I was purchasing these photos already framed & matted for A LOT of $$.

Photos of places I have never been & of things I have never seen. Then it hit me one day when I was at Bed Bath & Beyond. I saw a pack of black frames in all different sizes with the mattes included on sale for $20.00.. TWENTY DOLLARS. One of the pictures I had at home that I had bought was 5x7 & cost me $45.00... My light bulb went off... I bought the frames, took them home, printed out some pics I had taken & before I knew it, I had my "gallery" complete. For less than $35.00 ( ink & photo paper, I guess-timated)

I love that we are trying to use as much recycled materials & items as we can, first of all to do our part & second of all to save us some money. I will update everyone with pics and prices as we starting buying & getting our renovation underway...