Realistic Green Renovation

When my husband and I bought our brownstone in Brooklyn seven years ago, we tried to renovate in a way that respected not only the house's history but also the planet and our own health. We restored the old drafty windows instead of replacing them with the new vinyl-clad variety, we used low-VOC paints and we hired a guy who strips woodwork without toxic chemicals.

We did, regretfully, make a few ecological mistakes. When we had our floors refinished with ordinary polyurethane (it's water-based, we thought—how bad can it be?), I fled with our infant son to my mother's house until the noxious fumes had cleared. At least we had made sure they didn't use moisture-cured urethane, which, according to New York's Health Department, off-gases benzene, xylene and toluene diisocyanate (TDI), an asthma trigger. And I shudder to think of how many trees were felled to make all our bookshelves.

So when we recently decided to renovate the basement, we were determined to use only the most ecologically friendly building materials. It was a big job: The brick walls were crumbling, the pipes were brittle, the electrical and phone wires looped about in a hazardous tangle and the hulking furnace was a relic of the Kennedy era. Our son, now nearly three, was afraid to go down there. We wanted to turn this subterranean horror into a nice, bright space with a lot of storage shelves, an orderly laundry area and a big open space.

Our first step was to clear out the piles of stuff that had been gathering dust down there—some of it since the late 19th century—and to reuse or recycle as much as possible. We took a load of half-empty paint cans (that unfortunate shade of Granny Smith apple green that I'd painted our bedroom!) and an old box of fluorescent lighting tubes to the Department of Sanitation's toxic-waste collection site in Bensonhurst. In the YellowPages, we found a Reuse Center for Building Materials, who sent people to collect several old paneled doors, some unused carpet remnants and odd bits of hardware.

Once the space was cleaned out, it was time to find green materials—not as easy as I'd imagined. We had hoped to replace our old furnace with a state-of-the-art, 90-percent efficiency "condensing furnace," but we learned that these super-efficient furnaces require special exhaust venting, and we were not eager to drill a three-inch hole through the facade of our landmark-district brownstone. We'll have to settle instead for a standard 80-percent-efficiency model, not much of an improvement on the antique we have now. We were also disappointed in our search for a wallboard made from recycled paper and gypsum.*

But we did discover some materials that we could use with a clean conscience. For our storage shelving, instead of plywood, we used Medite II, a fiberboard made from 100-percent recycled and recovered wood, bound with formaldehyde-free synthetic resins but comparable in price. And it smells natural and earthy, like fresh hay. The company makes a similar product called Medex, which can be used for countertops and cabinets in wet areas like kitchens and bathrooms.

Once the shelves were installed, we were ready to brighten up the space with some wild colors. We painted the walls with Benjamin Moore's low-VOC Pristine EcoSpec primer and paint, and coated the concrete floors with AFM's Safecoat DecKote, a tough water-based sealer for indoor or outdoor use that can be tinted to any color (we chose a startling shade of aqua). And on the new stairs we used a water-based polyurethane, also made by AFM Safecoat, that miraculously has no odor at all. The workers on the job said they were happy that we'd chosen a product that didn't leave them with a reeling headache at the end of the day—and this time, we didn't have to evacuate.

*A good source for recycled gypsum is USG, whose Fiberock is made from 95 percent recycled materials. See www.usg.com to find retailers in your area.

Resources

Medite II shelves manufacturer: www.sierrapine.com

Floor paint and polyurethane and Safecoat DecKote: www.afmsafecoat.com

The Green Building Resource Guide website lists hundreds of ecologically sound products, from recycled cotton insulation to reclaimed wood flooring to super-efficient water heaters, (www.greenguide.com/about.html).