Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
They say an eco-friendly house can't be built in 150 days for $150,000, and I say it can.
I'm Allen Smith, join me as I push the limits with time, budget and creativity with the
Garden Home Challenge, exclusively on eHow Home. Wow, big place. Alright, I gotta lot
of ground to cover. I'm going to straight to tile because I don't have a lot of time.
Oh, I like this. Ooh, look at this. This Daltile is great. This product right here is a porcelain
tile, 97 percent of the material is recycled -- love it. Granite, nice. Too fancy. Fancy,
look at that. Whoa. That's from another planet. Pretty nice. I'm liking these colors. I need
something simple. You know, not too over the top. I mean, it's a farmhouse. You know, something
really basic like, you know, this. Or even that, maybe. It's just a master bathroom.
And, you know, maybe some kind of mushroom gray color like that would look good. I don't
know -- it just can't be too fancy. It doesn't need to be too much. I needs to be basic,
classy. So it's really been helpful, in coming into a place like this which is so vast and
can be overwhelming, is to try to break the rooms down. Not only try, just do. Create
a file for every room. And in that file, I list every fixture that I need, a color sample,
any notes about that room, where the light sockets are. Actually, a little diagram that
shows the layout of the furniture. If I've chosen some sort of fabric, which I'm gonna
use as a springboard for colors, that's also helpful. Any dimensions that you can have
where you can get a question answered then, place the order then, get it checked off your
list then. Just saves you time, and ultimately, saves you money, because time is money. You
know, color can be overwhelming. I like the fact that they have this low VOC formulation,
or maybe no VOC. But I'm just gonna take it a room at a time and not be overwhelmed by
some of this color. So this is really helpful: It shows all the sort of finishes -- flat,
matte, eggshell, perl, satin, semigloss. I mean…how do you know? How do you know? The
first thing is just get the color palette down and then start worrying about the finishes.
You know, I'm just giving some thought to the deck and the railing being painted with
a stain, an opaque stain that would almost look like a paint. Maybe even the floor? So,
lots of choices to make here. And then whether we put polyurethane on top of the stain floors
on the inside. You know, I kinda have to start with what the tone of the house is going to
feel like. And when I first came here, I really had to make some decisions about the bathroom.
So the master bathroom sort of set the tone in terms of color. So, you know, I'm looking
for Green materials, materials that, you know, have some sort of sustainable aspect to them.
So I found some tiles that would work for the shower. And then I needed to find a vanity.
And then that needed to work with the white porcelain, which will be a part of the sinks
and the commode. And then you got the paint for the walls. So it all starts to come together.
And you got to think of all the knobs, the pulls for the drawers and the vanity. I already
knew what the master bedroom ceiling is because we used a galvanized roof material there.
So that's working with my satin nickel or my polished nickel, or we'll probably go with
a brushed nickel. So we went into the hardware and sort of looked at what those choices might
be. Again, trying to find something that fits the budget. I just think this house is going
to look better if we use nickel instead of brass -- a cooler color. It'll just be lighter.
We've gone with lighter colors with the walls and the architecture, and I think that has
made the rooms feel more expansive. It's made the house feel larger. At least, that was
my hope once we get it all furnished. And it's gonna play well with some of the ceiling
materials that we've used. So I seem to be drawn to that -- it's worked in other houses
that I've done. So I keep falling back to that because it's always been successful.
Hey, we got some paint to try. We got a paint fan. Picked out a little hardware. Got the
tile all ordered and in place. Feeling good about it. I had no idea they had so many choices
here. Lumber 1 is a great place to visit, and people know what they're talking about
here -- I like it.