Recycling

I've wanted to try to make sure we aren't being too wasteful as part of this remodel. The most successful bits have been keeping the cabinets and appliances out of the dumpster, and not discouraging scrap pickers looking for metals in the dumpster, but there's a lot of waste still going on. The contractor has generally not been helpful about setting aside recyclable/salvageable things, despite requests to.

On the other side of the equation, however, we don't have any real recycled materials going into the project. We'd hoped to salvage the kitchen floor, but that was nixed. Evelin heard, however, that there were some old bowling alley lanes available at Community Forklift. Her aunt has kitchen counters made from old lanes and it looks really cool, so I went (with a few cautions from the contractor) to see if there might be enough material for our kitchen floor.

Turns out the lanes were mostly a laminate on a very thick base. If we did try to use them, we'd have a nearly two-inch step up into the kitchen (and a bit of reconfiguring of things like doors). So it's not going to happen.