During a recent visit to Eco6Design in Half Moon Bay, California, I was drooling over all the fabulous “eco” options for countertops. Serious eye candy! Vetrazzo, Fireclay Tile, Stone Age, IceStone, Fuez. I was itching to go home, rip out my pale-avocado-tile-with-black-grout counters and start afresh.

Greenbuild kicks off next week with lots of anticipation and excitement. If you are going to be in Chicago, please take the opportunity to visit the Healthy Home 2010 for a CEU and a tour of a beautiful, healthy, green home. Hop on the bus and receive CEU credits from Cambria and Benjamin Moore during your ride to and from the home.

To create healthy and sustainable interiors for our clients, it is essential that we understand how to enhance indoor air quality, tapping into IAQ-specific resources and expertise. GREENGUARD Environmental Institute (GEI) is at the top of my resource list.

Last year I had a lengthy conversation with a dear colleague and friend, Jill Salisbury, regarding a potential opportunity to educate the residential market about healthy and sustainable homes. We were frustrated with the status quo of showhouses treading the waters of "greenwashing." Jill had the good fortune of meeting Nancy and James Chuda, founders of Healthy Child Healthy World, and was quickly inspired to pursue the idea of creating a dynamic partnership.

The Rocky Mountain homeowners embraced the opportunity to "green" their remodeling project, primarily targeting the kitchen and the master bathroom. The design team—interior designer, architect, and homeowners—worked together as an integrated team to meet the project goals. We designed for multifunctional rooms with improved spatial relationships, family connectivity, increased storage and work areas, updated aesthetics, energy and water efficiency, and healthy indoor air quality balanced by timeless, durable, and easy-to-maintain design.

Two projects my company is currently working on involve a common problem: not enough insulation in the attic. Both homes are old; one dates from 1860, the other from 1705. In both cases we initially recommended insulating the rafter bays. In both cases, however, we were not able to get over homeowner biases against heating “storage spaces,” and instead opted for insulating the attic floor.

In my house we’ve been talking a lot lately about consumption—more specifically, about the relationship between consumption and our carbon footprint. In the green-building world, when we talk about a footprint, it’s usually related to building design.

What is the greenest way to build a deck? Is it okay to use pressure-treated lumber? What is the best way to attach it to the house? What kind of decking is the most sustainable, and what is the best method for attaching the deck boards to the framing? Should the surfaces be finished? With what product? These are just some of the questions I hear about creating outdoor living space.

Although there is a lot of interest in green finish materials, they don’t tend to come up often in the context of building energy performance. However, they do have the potential to influence energy performance in the following ways.

At the end of the day, we long to hang out in our favorite chair or sofa relaxing with a good book or movie. Usually that much-loved furniture is a piece of upholstered seating filled with all kinds of "stuff"—padding, springs, wood, webbing—covered with textile.

A quality piece of upholstery breaks down into four construction components; frames, springs, cushions, and pads. The first three components are wrapped in fabric or leather.

Here are sustainable alternatives to these components.