I love the TP holder, how the towels bring all the colors together, and your attention to the small details. I added the TP holder to my own bathroom notes. We are doing a gut in a year or two. I will also be using Swanstone for walls, but also using their ADA floor with the trough drain at the outer edge. I plan to take the wall panels to the ceiling. Is the cost so much more to do so, or did you simply like the more traditional look of lower shower walls? Mine is in an alcove, so I think that makes more of an argument for going all the way up for me, too. Are you loving the wall panels? Is the niche working well for you? I can't wait to get rid of my wire shampoo bottle hanger! I had a Toto with the special glazing inside in my last house. Don't you find that you don't need to use the toilet brush as often? I miss mine. I might steal your idea for the crown molding, too. I really admire your use of ecologically conscious materials. That is harder to do in a bath. Great Job!

Geraldo,,,When you say it takes more fuel and chemicals to produce corn than what the corn is worth, obvously you are following the same investigative reporting procedures as your infamous TV counterpart. I grew up on a 160 acre dairy farm in Greenford,Ohio that was totally self sustaining. Currently I am hobby farming on a small 60 acres farm in Youngstown, Ohio. Lacking the initial startup capital to buy modern farm equipment, we opted to get some basics on the used machinery market, a 1960 Mineapolis Moline 36 drawbar horsepower tractor ($2000), a 1966 ford 20 drawbar horsepower tractor (2.7gal/hr), 3 bottom 16" moldboard plow ($300 new), a tandem 9 ft disc ($50) and a two row John Deere corn planter ($300). The large tractor burns 5gal/hr and plows 6 acres per hour( $.83/acre), discs 12 acres per hour ( $.41/acre). The small tractor plants the corn at 5 acres/hr ($.55/acre) We practice crop rotation by planting corn one year, then timothy and clover hay for two years. The legumes provide a very lucrative cash crop of hay, which we bale in small bales targeted to the individual horse owner market. Five acres of hay will provide enough cash income to provide all the fuel used by our equipment for the entire season. In addition, the legumes replace the nitrogen that is taken out of the soil by the corn thus we have no need of buying fertilizer. (Though the concept of crop rotation is almost abandoned in commercial large scale farming in exchange for no till planting, chemical fertilizers and herbicides, in truth George Washington Carver originated the idea of crop rotation for self sustaining farming before the civil war. While tinkering with my antiquated equipment and outdated farming techniques will in no wise rival the fuel efficiencies of our commermercial counterparts on the mega farms with 200 horsepower diesel tractors, I can still produce an average of 100 bushels to the acre. (100 bu x 56lbs/bu = 5600 pounds of corn.) I currently have contracts to supply corn for home heating fuel through a small co-op of 20 homeowner neighbors. Based upon this little experiment I am discussing with 4 or 5 local farmers who are interested in joining our co-op to have a market for what they do best, produce corn. As a sideline, we are now applying for a Federal Gasohol" permit, which will allow us to own and operate a "Still" to manufacture corn whiskey, which will be used as the primary fuel for all our current gas burning engines. Federal law requires that all the distilled alcohol must be labeled as automotive fuel only, but no doubt someone may get a bit fueled up on a saturday nite tooo.

Really the most "green" way to deal with a kitchen is replace your appliances with energy efficient ones and leave the rest as it is, unless it is really falling apart. Unfortunately the heavy duty renovation that most of us do is not at all green it its core. I sold my cabinets, but everything else ended up in a landfill, and the new cabinets took trees and energy to make, and the countertop came out of a big hole in the ground. I hate to sound like an Eyeore (well I am, sorry) but if you took the 1980s fridge out of my parents kitchen, at its heart it would be more "green" than any new LEEDS certified kitchen simply because its been in service for 41 years and they have never been compelled to "un-dated" it. I wish it were a little more clear cut as to what the right green choices even *are*, but that is clouded with controversy: is a stewarded, non-endangered species wood floor green if it has to be freighted halfway around the world to get to my door? What about "inert" concrete floors? The production of concrete has a negative environmental impact. It would be great if there were real answers on how to be green when it involves demolishing something just because we don't like the esthetics or because something is inconvenient, but there isn't. Maybe thats why there havent been responses to the question... Its a great topic really, but I think the whole idea is in baby steps at this point.

My former neighbor started a high-tech, materials-handling facility, that claims to offer "true single stream disposal". Meaning you put everything in one large receptacle, the haulers bring it all to his facility, and pay a lower $/ton fee than the local city run "dump" charges, his facility then processes all of the material, separating out recyclables, and then transferring the remainder to the city "dump" and paying their higher per ton fee. His promotional material claims that his facility achieves a higher percentage of recycled material than the other processor in that area that offers "single steam recycling" and separate garbage disposal. When I was remodeling a duplex I own and had a large dumpster in the driveway, a couple of people stopped by to ask whether they could rummage through the dumpster to pull out any metal. My answer was NO, because I didn't want to risk them injuring themselves and suing me. Instead I made an agreement with one of them that I would set any metal waste aside for them to haul away, which seemed like a win-win. I wouldn't have to pay the disposal fee for whatever they took, and they knew enough about where to take it, and how to pre-process it so they could maximize its value. It was especially a win-win, when he offered to remove the entire oil-fired furnace from the low, damp, gross crawlspace, that we were replacing with a heat pump. The HVAC guy wrote up his initial bid including several hundred dollars for its removal and disposal.