Houses made differently

Today, people are thinking outside-the-box when it comes to housing. The Tiny House craze and Van Life exploded from a need for more ‘affordable’ housing and being a minimalist.  Builders and Designers are being creative with recycled materials, repurposing them and giving new life to the materials and to the inhabitants of these new style homes. Companies are being formed to convert and repurpose items into building materials to build affordable housing in areas that need it most.

Homeowners remodeling their homes are exploring and repurposing materials that would otherwise fill up landfills or lay to waste somewhere, giving new life and new meaning to the materials and the home.

A study conducted by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) study estimates that up to 8,000 pounds of waste are created during the construction of the average 2,000 square foot home. Most of that waste is wood, cardboard and drywall – and nearly all of it winds up in a landfill.

What if we could turn that around and start building homes with materials from the landfill? More and more innovations are making that vision a very real possibility. Your next new home could be built entirely from garbage.

Read more here….

Here a few resources for thinking outside-the-box when building or remodeling:

1. This website shows 11 resources for finding reclaimed materials.
2. PlanetReuse helps connect buyers with sellers of reclaimed materials.
3. Here are some clever ways to use salvaged materials in your home.
4. If you are looking for the ‘unusual’ here are 8 unusual homes built from recycled materials.
5. Giving new meaning and new life to previous structures and materials are found in these 33 eco-chic homes.
6. Waste turned into eco-friendly building materials, check it out.

Today, our environment, the cost of housing, our communities, being sustainabe, requires us to think outside-the-box, to recreate and redesign and repurpose the materials we use in building and remodeling our homes.