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As you start your cabinet refacing project you will be faced with many decisions. The endless choices in color, style and components can be overwhelming! Don't panic. We are here to help you with insightful articles and practical advice. Here is some more information on different cabinet styles:
A surefire way to bring your entire home into the modern age is to start with the kitchen. You'd be surprised at how a simple cabinet refacing project will begin a designer chain reaction, spilling contemporary styles into the rest of the rooms. Enter the Modern Age of Cabinet Refacing. Perhaps the most enticing characteristic of modern cabinet refacing is your ability to combine shades and textures to break traditional style rules. Modern cabinet refacing finishes are limited only by your imagination -- paint, glaze, stain, bleach, and pickle some of the more popular cabinet face choices. Cut out the center panels of your current cabinets and reface them with glass or other various materials. This is your opportunity to be colorful and creative with your cabinets.
While basic wood is still the material most new cabinets are made of, a growing group is looking for something more unique. Red birch and white oak are replacing maple and cherry. Mahogany is also high on the list for new cabinets. Paint selections are moving towards greens, blues, and browns in place of white or off-white shades to coordinate with other rooms in the house. With respect to grain, horizontal is beginning to edge vertical in contemporary kitchens.
Metal siding has a lower embodied energy than vinyl or composite wood products because it uses recycled steel and aluminum. However, energy efficiency is a separate matter. None of the materials has significant insulating capabilities. Vinyl siding is 0.04-0.048 inches thick, and aluminum ranges from 0.019 to 0.024 inches. Steel is comparable to vinyl. As a result, the R-values of all three materials are less than 1. Because vinyl follows the contour of walls very closely, backer board is sometimes sandwiched between the wall surface and the siding; this board adds a little insulating capability if it is installed correctly, but not much. Composite wood siding also adds a little insulation value, but only if it is used as siding rather than as the original wall surface.
Vinyl is by far the least expensive of the siding options. Of course, prices can vary dramatically among different regions, and installation costs vary even more. Environmental factors can vary among siding types, but regional markets often determine which one will be used. The American consumer buys siding, like many other things, primarily on the basis of cost and aesthetics. Environmental factors play an increasingly valid role and are likely to become more prominent with time.
When building a home consider the following alternative.
60% of all the trees we log domestically are used to build houses. The average new 2,000 square foot home requires an entire clear cut acre worth of wood to build, that's around 1000 trees! A growing number of consumers, builders, and architects are turning to a variety of more environmentally conscious wood flooring choices rather than choosing recently milled oak or maple. Some look to fast-growing bamboo harvested from Southeast Asia or to tiles of cork, made from the bark of oak trees in the Mediterranean. Another green option is wood that has been cut from forests managed sustainably. This is wood that has been certified by the U.S. Forest Stewardship Council, a Washington-based nonprofit group backed by industry and environmental organizations and affiliated with a similar international organization. |
