Green Kitchen Part 1

This past spring Nat and I got to the bottom of a leak in our kitchen.  It had been leaking for a long long time and so it rotted out our wall, floor and part of our cabinets...  Although no one jumps for joy at news of a leak (and the impending money that gets used fixing it!) we used the opportunity to do as green of a kitchen reno as we could.

The leak was coming from a plumbing vent cap that cracked, every time it rained water was trickling down along the pipe.

We did some good hard thinking and thought about the following things:

1) What will be good quality and look good (which will help with resale)?
2) What will return to nature (or biodegrade) when we are done with it (or when the next owners want to redo the kitchen again!)?
3) What will have low or no VOCs and give us good air quality in our home?

With these things in mind we decided to go as plastic-free as possible...

Here's what we decided on:

Floor:  Plain ceramic tile from Home Depot  (there was a recycled variety available a Rona but only in 2 colours, so we didn't go with it).  No VOC grout from a tile store.

Cabinets:  Solid wood and Plywood cabinets made from a local company:  Maple Ridge Woodcraft.  This meant no chipboard held together with glues that can offgas.

Countertop:  Ice stone- recycled glass and concrete surface.

Lighting:  6 potlights- LEDs with dimmers.  This thanks to our friend and Neighbour Peter- what a blessing!

Paint:  Benjamin Moore's Natura no Voc blue paint and Yolo Paints No voc cream paint.

Backsplash:  Hand-picked of the beach pebble sticks from Mosaic Stoneworks- where the owner assured us the workers were treated decently and paid decently too (we don't have 3rd party certification for this one- but the owner has been to see the conditions himself so we are trusting him on it!)

We were really blessed to have 2 of our neighbours help out: Peter & Ken.  Nat is really a lot handier after this experience!  We also redid our bathroom but I'll blog more about that later!

It was an expensive reno because we decided not to do a quick fix, but by January it will be mostly paid off!  So we have no regrets about the choices we made!    Here are some pictures!