Building a New Home Using Old Materials

By Katherine Salant

As you pull up in front of Julee Herdt's new house in Boulder, Colo., the first thing you notice is the contemporary styling and the light gray color of the stucco and the metal roof. They're definitely a departure from the traditionally styled, remodeled and enlarged '60s ranches in her neighborhood, but that's not the half of it.

The unusual black metal grilles on the front balconies that give the house a definite techno cast turn out to be reused industrial floor grating that was salvaged from an old factory. The gray-colored balcony deck boards and rails that add to the techno effect are Winchester Gray-colored Trex, a composite material made of recycled plastic grocery bags and wood. A closer look at the windows and you see that the windowsills are also Trex. Herdt's no-maintenance innovation is so practical-this type of material resists rot and bugs and doesn't require painting-you wonder why it hasn't been done before.

Then there are the 22-foot-high solid pine columns incorporated into the window walls by the front door that were salvaged from a 100-year old boat house in Denver. The front door itself is a bright red, five-paneled door that once beckoned students to a University of Colorado classroom.

What's going on here? Clearly the architect of this house has a different agenda than most. Indeed, Herdt, an architect, an architecture professor at the University of Colorado in Denver, and a committed environmentalist, had some unusual priorities in her choice of materials. Whereas most architects, home builders and owners tend to focus on appearance, price, durability and availability, Herdt's credo is "reuse, recycle, renew." That is, can you get reusable items, such as doors, that have been salvaged from old buildings and thus kept out of a landfill? Can you get materials with recycled content that otherwise would end up in a landfill? If you have to buy a brand new "virgin" material, is it made of renewable resources such as wood rather than a non-renewable fossil fuel such as oil? She carried this one even further and tried, where possible, to use agro-based materials made from crop residues such as wheat straws and sunflower seed hulls.

And she managed to do all this without aesthetic compromise. She is, after all, an architect. The finished product does have to look good, and it does.

On the inside, the first thing you notice in this large 3,900-square-foot house is the earth-toned, light-filled interior with its many textures. The second thing you notice is a similarity to more conventional houses--the major living areas share one large space. And then more of those interesting details emerge. Herdt's dog greets visitors from her tabletop perch that appears to be a gray granite slab. In fact, it's a Phenix Environ bio-composite board made of pressed newsprint and a soy-based resin. The textures in the charcoal-colored block wall in the living room area that Herdt's mason dubbed "granola block" are actually wood chips. The material, called Faswall, is made of wood chips with a small amount of cement and flyash, a by-product of coal burning at electric generating plants. The stairs are another tour de force in reuse. The stair rails were scrap aluminum, and the pine stair rail pickets were once cores of the large wooden spools that utility companies use to transport cable.

The heart of Herdt's house, as with most houses today, is the kitchen. The L-shaped counter and island layout are familiar but the materials are not. The stunning cabinet doors and drawer fronts are made of wood that was once used for benches at Boulder's Bandshell Park (everything in this house seems to have a history) and mysterious burled panels that might be wood but on closer inspection turn out to be Dakota Burl, another Phenix product made of sunflower seed hulls. To one side of the reused concrete sink is a reused concrete counter that extends out to be a breakfast bar; Herdt picked these up at a local recycling center. The butcher-block counter to the other side of the sink turns out to be the underside of a bowling lane.

Some of the other unusual materials in Herdt's house: the master bathroom door is a reused commercial-grade, clear glass storefront door; to create privacy Herdt frosted the glass with etching solution. The Yemm & Hart "Origins" countertops for the two sinks in the master bath are 1-inch thick recycled plastic made from milk jugs and detergent bottles. The doors of the vanity cabinet below one of the sinks are made of the same material and the bright blue and green cabinet door handles are reused laundry detergent tops lifted from a neighbor's curbside pick-up.

By now, it's clear that almost nothing in Herdt' house is ordinary. The interior walls studs were reused from the '60s ranch house that originally stood on Herdt's lot (she deconstructed it, reused the studs and sent everything else that was salvageable to a Boulder recycling center). The finish for the interior walls is a thin coat of plaster over Gridcore, a material made of recycled paper that can be substituted for drywall that Herdt herself helped to develop.

How much did Herdt's 3,900-square-foot house cost? The total construction cost was $231,000, a very modest sum for the Boulder area. A production builder's charge for a comparably-sized house would have been about thirty percent higher and a custom home builder's charge would have been at least sixty percent higher.

To keep her costs down, however, Herdt made some trade offs that other homeowners might not choose. The interior is simple, some might call it Spartan, with little trim work around doors and windows, and there is no carpeting or hardwood. All the floors are linoleum, another agro-based material whose main ingredient--unbeknownst to most consumers--is linseed oil. Though Herdt did reuse a lot of materials including all the doors and sinks, this was not a real money saver. As Eric Doub, one of Herdt's contractors remarked, "you can get a door for $10, but you spend another $100 to $150 in carpenter's time to make it useable. It's not a savings, it's an aesthetic and political choice."

How easily could one build a house like Herdt's? There are many building products now available that contain recycled material or agro-based fibers. Some like Trex have been around for years, but most of them are fairly new and do not have a long history, Herdt said. She was comfortable with her choices because she had used them on previous projects. Since most homeowners will lack such familiarity, she suggests tracking down builders who have used these unusual materials and ask them about their experiences. As she points out, "just because something is green and environmentally benign doesn't mean that it's automatically a great product."

Before you start researching materials, though, make sure that you have the right temperament this type of project. You have to be comfortable with the idea that you won't know what it will look like until you're finished because you never know what you will find at a recycling center, Herdt said. They may have a lot of doors but the styles will all be different, and there are always oddball things like the factory floor grating that she used for the balcony grilles and sideyard fencing. And, with such a potentially mixed assortment of things to work with, you would be wise to have an architect or a builder with an unusually strong design sense. Otherwise, Herdt said, "you could end up with a mess instead of a masterpiece."

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