sustainable home renovation

[TiddleTaddleTat]

Hi
About half way through renovating our house. Currently picking options for the kitchen refit and ground floor flooring.
I’ve found two local companies - one for the kitchen and another to do the flooring. However am frustrated by limited eco options available.
It’s so hard to find fitters willing to look beyond the standard laminates , upvc etc!

Interested in ideas for
Worktops
Sinks
Hard flooring suitable for kitchen, hall, diner

I was originally planning for quickstep laminate floor, a composite granite sink and iroko worktop. However after a little research this morning I realise that these are poor choices in terms of off-gassing, sustainability etc.
Am considering bamboo and cork flooring but fitting is the issue.
Budget low to medium
Ideas welcome!!

Bump

I am ShOCKEd that no one else is thinking about this !

Hi, hope I'm not too late to help. Try this www.barhamandsons.com/Resilient-Flooring/Laminate-Flooring/Water-Resistant-Laminate/Kronswiss-Oak/
Sourced this product from a recent trade fair. Much cheaper than Quickstep and it is waterproof! Perfect for the kitchen and children. x

Following for ideas! The most sustainable option is obviously reclaimed everything, but ironically it’s also expensive if sourced through a company that specialises in that. And DIY reclamation involves having hours of time to spare to track things down. Whereas laminate is convenient and cheap.

Reclaimed stuff seems to be the sole preserve of people featured in the Sunday papers where it’s unclear where the wealth for their renovated listed cottage in Wiltshire comes from – you know, he’s an entrepreneur and she makes cushions, they bought the £1.2m cottage as a wreck and painstakingly repaired the floors using old church pews found in a skip.

I think this is a brilliant idea for a thread. I’m embarrassed to admit that it was not something that had even crossed my mind when I started thinking about our renovations. It was one of the architects that we had quote for us who was really focused on how we could achieve what we wanted in a sustainable way. I was all for knocking things down and starting from scratch…he was much more focused on how we could achieve our objectives in quite innovative ways that completely blew my mind. We are right at the very start of our work so would love to get thoughts on sustainable solutions.

Your architect sounds fab! Please tell me you are based in the South west?!

Alas not @PraiseBee !

I have very few ideas OP, but we're on our third house refurb and I often cringe about the number of kitchen units, bathrooms and carpets we've chucked into landfill over the years. Refurbing can definitely be shocking for your carbon footprint!
Is the modern trend for furniture and kitchen units made out of plywood or chipboard something to explore?
www.sustainablekitchens.co.uk/bespoke-kitchens/plywood/

Hi OP, we did a kitchen reburb pre-covid and I did a fair bit of research about materials before embarking on it. I was mainly concerned about off-gassing from things like MDF and glues used. In the end we went for a) Kahr's engineered wood (with water based finish) for the flooring (www.kahrs.com) and had the joiners use the click lock system instead of glueing it down, b) Axiom worktop (we used one of the ones that is Greenguard certified for indoor air quality). We also used low-VOC paints (Little Greene and Earthborn) for decorating. The only thing we couldn't get eco-friendly was kitchen units. We went with Howdens who was the only one that could deliver within our tight deadline. But if you are getting custom joinery done for the kitchen you could ensure the joiner uses low-formaldehyde wood (timber or plywood hanson-plywood.co.uk/products/pure-glue-eco-poplar-throughout-plywood/).

Heard about this directory of companies that “do less harm” as I sometimes listen to the podcast by the same lady.

www.madaboutthehouse.com/do-less-harm/

Linoleum or marmoleum are good, natural flooring products or osmo hard wax oil if your floorboards are good enough

we put in a second hand kitchen (John Lewis of hungerford -£200!!) and used slate from a Reclaimation yard for worktops

we weren’t sustainable by design but through necessity to keep costs low

We’re away to do a big renovation and some of the builders haven’t been happy at my plans to not replace all my internal woodwork! So tell me how replacing solid timber doors/facings/skirtings with MDF is a good idea?!

I came here to suggest marmoleum flooring, which is 97% natural but @Handsnotwands beat me to it.

Some kitchen companies have very detailed carbon offsetting and sustainability commitments, see for instance www.schueller.de/en/company/sustainability.

I recently researched sustainable worktop options, but there aren’t a lot of obvious contenders. There are companies doing recycled glass and recycled plastic worktops, but they tend to be geared at non residential mostly. The recycled plastic ones are also fragile - they scratch and burn easily. If you find a good option, let me know!

What about something like the used kitchen company?

The best option for the environment will always be to make do with what you already have. If what you're ripping out is solid and durable, could you repair or refurbish it instead? Kitchens can be repainted or sanded down and refinished.

If what you have is unusable, or if you're building and equipping a new roomthen consider things like second hand kitchens.

If you must buy new, think about durability: a good quality solid wood kitchen will last a lifetime if looked after, and can be sanded down and repainted if you (or a future occupier of your property) wants a change of look.

Failing that, the choice of materials and location they're sourced from will be the next biggest factor. Cement is a massive source of carbon emissions so choosing alternatives to concrete will help.

It's definitely something I think about, and I'm surprised people don't think about it. We're embarking on a big remodel to a very tired house that hasn't had anything new in it for 40 years yet has nothing really worth salvaging for retro or vintage reasons either! I really don't want to put everything in a skip but everything has had its full lifetime and then some. I'd love to find loads of stuff second hand but it's so true, we both work full time and so time is limited to search for and pick up stuff. Bamboo and Cork really interests me so would love to know more about what people have used. We are trying to make sustainable changes where we can, we have an ASHP to replace the ancient boiler which is wonderful.

How do you go about getting a second hand kitchen? I've looked at companies that sell them but they are fancy and still cost ££££

Ours was off FB marketplace. It came from a kitchen much bigger than ours. I hired a van, picked it up, measured everything then sat down with some graph paper and cut out scale models of all the bits so I could move them around to best fit our space.

I think, as with lots of sustainable things, you need to play the long game. As it turned out I wasn’t quite ready to afford doing the kitchen but when I saw ours advertised I knew it was too good an opportunity to miss

i stored it in a friends spare room while I slowly saved and collected the other things we’d need, eg waited for the right sink to come up second hand, saw someone selling some left over tiles that were suitable. It probs took about a year to gather everything together.

Thank you for explaining how you did it. We've moved into a house with a kitchen that's falling apart but we don't want to spend loads of money on a new kitchen because eventually we would like to extend and change the layout. Also want to be sustainable. Nice to know how you went about it

Hi, we renovated out kitchen using second hand kitchen sourced off of Gumtree! I have a whole blog on it in my website for tips if you fancy a read. 😊anneinteriors.com/how-to-plan-second-hand-kitchen/