For most architects and developers, building a green kitchen means using non-formaldehyde, non-toxic substrates (which could take the form of plywood, particleboard, or MDF), combined with low-VOC finishes, and Energy-Star appliances. Well, that's certainly a very good start, and if that was all there was to it this would be a very short article. The choices available for substrates and finishes are growing very rapidly and keeping up with the market is a real challenge.

The good news is that unlike in the past, we have many choices. This article describes a green kitchen we designed, built and installed in a new vacation home. Hopefully, it will give you ideas beyond substrates and finishes--which I won't spend time on as they are now the 'old-news' in green kitchens. Many of the concepts also apply to remodels.

The house is a mountain cabin with a modest 750 sq ft footprint and an equal sized, but offset, loft area above. This creates a roof for the west facing front porch, which keeps the summer sun off of the windows, and a cathedral ceiling above the great room. The cabin has minimal eco-system impact as it sits in the corner of a 25 acre site which has a creek on the opposite end of the property. The building is oriented along an east-west axis and thus is ideally situated for a future 2.5kw photovoltaic installation on the roof. The kitchen is modest in size and is adjacent to the dining and living room areas, all of which comprise the east facing great room. The large low-e windows provide spectacular views of the Tetons as well as significant daylighting throughout the great room. The floor underlayment consists of exterior ply and the great room/kitchen floor is sustainably harvested 'character grade' madrone. The knots in the madrone are filled with a black water based filler and the floor received two coats of OSMO Polyx-Oil. In our initial tests, we tried using an oil based filler but discovered that the black filler turned grey when the Polyx-Oil was applied.

The kitchen countertop has two components. The bulk of the L-shaped counter consists of dark grey Squak Mountain Stone. In addition to its beauty and functionality, the high mass of the Squak Mountain Stone also allows it to act as a thermal sink. Within the long run of the counter, adjacent to the built-in cook top, is a piece of end-grain recycled butcher block fir. The butcher block received a coat of Bio-Shield herbal oil which is safe to use with food. The backsplash above the counter consists of small 'stacked stones' and in the area of the cook top there are glass tiles above the backsplash. And while it has nothing to do with the green aspect of things, I'll mention that the double sink is a 'butterfly' shape and sits in the corner of the L shaped counter. Since the cabinets below sinks and in corners each represent significantly underutilized space in most kitchens, combining them allowed this to be kept to a minimum. The veneer used for the cabinet door and drawer faces is birch bark. Tree bark is typically waste and is rarely used for furniture or cabinetry.

Using a vacuum bag veneer press, water-based glue was used to adhere the veneer to the substrate. As the veneer is not uniformly flat (it gets pretty gnarly around the various small knots) it took a few attempts to figure out how to get it to adhere completely. Eventually, by sandwiching a layer of bubble wrap between the veneer and a hard board, we were able to get a good result with the vacuum press.

If you're like me, you probably are always pondering how to creatively integrate more green aspects into your projects. I hope that this helps to stimulate your thinking.

This article, by Bob Margulis, was originally published in the Spring 2007 EcoBuilding Times.