More Spring Hill Enviro Cottage

This is a closer look at the kitchen joinery we created for the Spring Hill Enviro Cottage, with its doors and drawer faces made from recycled Australian hardwood floorboards, finished with a low emission, natural clear coating made by Oikos (that was an absolute joy to apply!). We also harvested a quantity of discarded low emission board panels for this kitchen that had been rejected by others because they had been scratched in transit. Instead of resigning them to pollute in landfill, we used them as a very responsible carcass material - which is the part of the kitchen that goes unseen (and often made of the cheapest, nastiest and most irresponsible board material being produced in the world).

The home, in the inner suburbs of Brisbane, will be open to tour and inspire on Sustainable House Day this year, Sunday September 12. There are certainly a host of fabulous 'green' ideas to be investigated in the house, including the beautiful little medicine cabinets we made for the bathrooms and magical laser cut screening enveloping the house that mimics the shading properties of a deciduous tree.

For more information on the Spring Hill Enviro Cottage and information on their public tour dates visit www.envirocottage.com.au

Enviro Cottage Sneak Peek...

This picture is a little sneak peak of a project we have been busy on over the past few months. We were fortunate enough to be chosen as the joinery partner to the 'Spring Hill Enviro Cottage'. It has involved the renovation of a typical Queensland inner city worker's cottage into a benchmark for an environmentally responsible modern home.

We constructed the kitchen, glimpsed in the photo above, out of some of the most exciting sustainably sourced materials we have ever used. The star of the kitchen are doors, drawer fronts and panels fashioned out of leftover recycled Australian hardwood salvaged from the demolition of a local bridge. The timber's graceful aged patina has been enhanced with the use of a natural oil to finish it. The recycled timber is a beautiful textural contrast to the shiny modern materials that surround it making it a stunning decorative element in the space.

The project will soon be open to the public to tour. Watch this space for more details and some more glimpses of our joinery....

A Greener Family Kitchen

This is very exciting blog entry for us here at Greener Kitchens as it is the first from our fabulous new designer, Francine Lafebre. Francine designed this amazing kitchen transformation for a family living in Stafford, she writes:

"A young family with two young children were crying out for a more open plan feel for their kitchen that would allow them to be together at all times. Increasing the opening in the dividing wall between the kitchen and living area provided not only more natural light in the kitchen but it also gave a real feeling of integrating it into the living and dining area without imposing on it.

With a love of home cooking and baking and involving the children, the benchtop was designed to run through the opening and have a slight overhang on the dining side to provide an place for the kids to sit, eat and help mum.

The old dresser was also to be replaced, being careful not to make this wall look like it was also part of the kitchen we decided that glass framed wall units and a reclaimed timber benchtop would help create a ‘transition’ piece from kitchen to living and dining. The beautful reclaimed timber top adds warmth and reflects the polished floor boards that run throughout the house.

The clients, being very environmentally conscious were keen to have their kitchen made from the lowest emission materials possible and with their energy efficient appliances, create a healthier, sustainable kitchen for their young family to grow up in.

It was as important to us to use the right materials as achieve our goals in meeting the design brief. The internals of the units were made to suit the client, adding and internal drawer in the pantry for extra storage and making sure that mixers etc all fitted in the drawers, designed to the appropriate height to accommodate these. We also opted for a handleless design, giving the kitchen a streamlined, modern feel, and make a material saving.

We would like to thank the clients for being part of working for a more sustainable future and giving us yet another wonderful opportunity to show that you can achieve practical, functional as well as stunning design by using innovative building materials with a reduced environmental impact.

Above is a couple of before and after shots of the 'Greener Family Kitchen' illustrating the way in which it opened up the kitchen to the rest of the house and the family."

Vanity is not a sin if it's greener!

Jane Austen once said that vanity and pride are different things but this is certainly not the case at Greener Kitchens + Bathrooms!

We are incredibly proud of the vanity cabinets we are creating because they are made of beautiful low emission, responsibly sourced materials. For instance, we made both of the vanities shown above from timber veneers that are labelled with a certification ensuring they have been derived from responsible forest management practices. Such practices ensure that long term forest management strategies are implemented to protect high conservation value forests, waterways, wildlife habitat and worker safety. Similar labelling schemes are now being applied to other products with wood content such as toilet paper and outdoor furniture.

So, don't let your loo paper down, make everything in your bathroom environmentally responsible!

Wilston Greener Kitchen

This was a very exciting kitchen for us, built as a part of a new addition to an existing post-war cottage in Wilston.

We carefully designed the kitchen to make a feature of an exciting new material we have been developing the use of this year. The material is a hoop pine eco ply door material, with a core of post consumer recycled cardboard. The result is a very strong, stable, extremely light kitchen door with the warmth of a locally sourced renewable timber. The material is extremely low emission as the cardboard core of the product is VOC free. A practical advantage of the cardboard core is that it does not swell if exposed to moisture, unlike typical compressed board materials used in kitchen construction, adding to the longevity of the kitchen.

We used the cardboard core ply doors as a feature material to help define the carfully composed lines of the kitchen design and add a textural depth to the kitchen palette. The remaining doors in the kitchen are a warm white low emission melamine faced material with a satin gloss finish (that is inexpensive, long lasting and very easy to clean). As usual, we 'rescued' the engineered stone for the benches and used very low emission Australian made carcass material.

As with a number of our kitchens, the splashback is punctuated by a window sitting behind the cooking area, providing energy efficient natural task lighting and framing the greenery outside (and in this case revealing a lovely view of Mt. Cootha in the distance).

We would like to thank our fabulous client for embracing our passion for creating built environments that are sustainable and for trusting us to use recycled cardboard to make her kitchen!

Paddington Greener Kitchen

We have recently finished this beautiful kitchen just down the road and around the corner from our new studio.

The first picture is an early three dimensional drawing we composed during the planning phase of the project to represent the idea of the completed kitchen to the client. The following two pictures are of the same kitchen once completed and styled for the photo shoot.

The kitchen has been constructed of our typical low emission, responsibly sourced materials such as an acrylic two pack paint finish as well as rescued stone benches. The kitchen palette and design was purposely restrained in order for the view of the greenery outside to imbue the space with interest and life. I am very pleased with the way the windows in the kitchen invite the calming hues and interesting shapes of the garden into the space as well as providing natural task lighting and ventilation.

It was great to be involved in such a local project and we look forward to walking to site visits more often!

Our New Studio!

We have recently moved into a cosy new studio space at 83 MacGregor Terrace in Bardon. We look forward to meeting with new and exisiting clients in our studio by appointment Monday to Friday, and Saturday by arrangement.

Keep an eye on our blog for plenty of new posts once I get a chance to venture out and take shots of our recently completed jobs. Just have to get over the move first!