The Indy Home Show Recap

"What's a Green Zone?"

Apparently, this year's Indy Home Show features a "Green Zone" located at the end of one of the aisles. The carpet is

a slightly greener shade of green than the green carpet used in the rest of the aisle, and the area features a couple of signs to denote that it is, in fact, the Green Zone. Here the discerning home improver will find, tucked neatly away from the beaten path to the featured house (created by Davis Homes, a local builder who had some money troubles for a while, and whose contributions to the local home inventory were great enough to leave Central Indiana with a glut of homes for hmmm, let's say some years...), a short aisle full of businesses touting Green products.

Shouldn't we be pushing Green products a little more? They can save us money on utilities when used properly, they can save our bodies from the effects of harmful chemicals. They can even save the world that we live on from getting all cluttered up from petrochemical products so it ends up looking like a teenagers closet. Whew! That's quite a feat! Should we really be tucking them into a back corner

of the home show? C'mon Indy Home Show Organizers!

Nevertheless, Greenway Supply was there with a beautiful display of alternative energy sources and solar panels. Other featured items in the Green Zone were patio composters (they're wonderful!), a group that does organic recycling for compost and mulch, and a group touting LED's as the lightbulb of the future.

One custom home builder (Frank Redavide of Castalia homes) we spoke with at the beginning of the show told us that Indiana ranks "49 out of 50" in Green prac

tices. Apparently W. Virginia is 50th. He does all Green homes, and is very proud of his work and LEED certifications. He recommended that anyone looking to make their home or investment property more Green should start simple.

One of the greatest things we saw at the show, however, was in the model home. Designers from The Inside Job inc. went wild with the idea of reuse-recycle. The home featured antiques of all kinds as decoration, as usable objects, as reused objects. One of my favorites was an old door converted into a chic dining table, and another was the valances on the upstairs windows that featured collages of different antique house and door bits. Every time we do a renovation, it always breaks my heart to have to let go of doors, lumber and other cool house parts. Now there's a way to reuse them with style!