True Green Recycling

The laurel hedge will soon be completely gone. Currently what you see the laurel all pretty and managable, well wait until Jan.7th when PROGRASS removes it all. Stay Tuned!

Recycling the R.E.X. house

Greg Gish from S & H Landscape Supplies and Recycling was the main man helping me out with mulching all my rotten boards. They were extremely helpful and accomodating in every way.

Dry Rot and termites

From day one, The Rebuilding Center's Deconstruction crew has gone above and beyond what they were contracted to do. Case in point. All the boards that were rotten or termite invested were sorted by paint and no paint. That's right! Each and every board. So no lead paint would be put back into the ground when we mulch the wood. They then loaded the wood, took it to S and H Landscape Supplies and Recycling and in less than two hours our original yucky wood was delivered and dropped off for future garden needs. Due to the worst weather imaginable the deconstruction took longer than originally planned, but two weeks to save everything from the old house, was worth every extra day.

Last day of the Laurel Hedge

At last the prison like laurel hedge is going bye bye. This week the whole thing will be pruned, branches will be sorted out for future projects and then the roots will be yanked up, ground into mulch and put back into the soil. For over twenty years this beast of a plant has over shadowed the cute little cottage on REX street. It's time for a change and a new REX face lift. Stay tuned for photos!

Q-Renew, that's me!

The past ten years I have shared my ideas on how to change regular old things into something useful. Making trash into treasures, junk into beauty and broken into functional. Well as you can see I've got pile after pile to reuse and The R.E.X. Project Reuse Everything eXperience is the biggest challenge of my career. I've become the Renew Expert and everything I need is currently sitting in my yard! Already we know what some things will be used as; brick will become columns, lath will become part of the siding installation, and the landscape Designers Greggsand Ellis Lanscaping Design have dibs on the sidewalk. Right now it looks like a bomb went off, but trust me in the end, everything will find a new home.

No looking Back!

Rain , wind freezing cold temperatures can't keep us down! The worst storm in over ten years hit Oregon this first week of December. I was hoping the mother nature would tear the roof off for us, but no luck.





The R.E.X. Project is in full swing and we are discovering some gorgeous tight grain wood, a killer kitchen corner cabinet with a lead glass door, and some rare bottles. On the yuck side, a gross toilet, junky air conditioner, and tons of lath that I haven't a clue what to do with. Any ideas? We also are having concerns as to where the heck are we going to store everything. Currently it looks like a bomb went off in the yard and our Contractor Adam Reed Cascade contracting is giving me "the Look" which is interpreted as "where is the new house going?"

The R.E.X. Project, WEEK One

Everywhere you turn there seems to be dumpster after dumpster parked along side the road, quickly filling up with material from a construction site. Just in my neighborhood alone I counted three within a four block radius. And where is this all going...to the dump, to the dump, to the dump, dump, dump.

I want to change that thought process. How, may you ask? Well, I bought a cottage, OK maybe it's a fixer, alright I'll come clean, it's a shack. The City of Portland says "unlivable". So, instead of it making it's way to the landfill, I am going to attempt to completely infuse the entire old crusty house into the new one! Yep, I am recycling an entire house! We are calling this craziness, The R.E.X. Project Reuse Everything eXperiment.

But wait, we didn't stop there. Why not recycle and reuse all the landscaping too! So be it. It 's a done deal. With Cascade Contracting in our corner and The Rebuilding Center deconstructing the house, we are off to a great start!

On Wednesday November 28th 2007 what was once an idea in my head, became the start of a reality. Most are calling me crazy, I just think I am building challenged.