Home tour: Expanding a little bit at a time in Atwater

This story begins nine years ago when architect Rebecca Rudolph and her designer-builder husband, Colin Thompson, bought a cottage in Atwater Village. It was cheap ($139,000) and tiny (500 square feet). Someone else might have seen a tear down, but they saw opportunity for a modest expansion.

First came a stylish 300-square-foot detached office, followed by a remodel that more than doubled the size of the house while keeping most of the yard intact. The result is a swoon-worthy home filled with lots of fresh ideas -- a wall of salvaged wood fencing in the living room, a translucent curtain that blocks UV rays but not the view, plus low-water landscaping and a green roof.

To read more about the house check out Lisa Boone's story, or click through a photo gallery of the home.

-- Deborah Netburn

Photos clockwise from top right: Rebecca Rudolph pulls a curtain that blocks UV rays; Colin Thompson waters the roof; the couple's daughter Rei Thompson watches television in the living room. Photo credit: Ken Hively / Los Angeles Times

A new twist on living Christmas trees: renting

'Tis the season for Christmas tree buying, and today there are more options than ever. There are farmed trees, which are grown in the U.S. and Canada and make up the vast majority of Christmas tree sales in the country; more than 28 million were sold in 2008. There are fake trees, which are largely made in China and account for an extra 11 million trees sold annually. Then there are the living trees -- many of which are small pines and firs that are potted and can later be planted.

But this year in L.A. there’s another option: Living trees for rent. The Living Christmas Co., based in Torrance, is offering potted, 2- to 7-foot-tall Christmas trees that are delivered and picked up via biodiesel truck.

"For a lot of people, Christmas begins as soon as the tree shows up. It’s awesome -- all joy. And then afterward you have that opposite emotion," said company founder, Scott "Scotty Claus" Martin, 30. "You see that same tree laying by the curbside and they don’t pick it up right away. There’s such a disconnect between something that symbolizes joy and life, and that."

While many cities, including Los Angeles, offer curbside tree recycling programs, Martin says rented trees keep on giving because they provide "joy for years to come." The live trees can also be adopted (and planted), but most will be returned to the company’s storage area for maintenance and grooming until next December.

The Living Christmas Co. isn’t the first to rent trees. This West Coast phenomena cropped up in 1992, when The Original Living Christmas Tree Co. set up shop in Portland, Ore. That firm, which only operates in Portland, now rents Sequoias and Nordmann firs for $80, shipping them out and picking them up in hybrid Zipcars. San Francisco’s Friends of the Urban Forest offers full-size but non-traditional varieties of rentable trees, such as magnolias, for $95; the trees are later planted throughout the city. And San Diego’s Adopt A Christmas Tree delivers its $79-$189 live trees with singing and dancing elves in tow, then after the holidays donates them to families with fire-damaged homes and yards.

The Living Christmas Co. has about 8,000 trees in five different varieties that rent for $85-$185, delivery and pick-up included. The company’s service area, however, is fairly limited.

"We go from Long Beach up to the Pacific Palisades and as far east as West L.A.," he said, adding that the company intends to expand its area of operation next year.

-- Susan Carpenter

Photo: Living Christmas Company

Giving old barns a new modern life indoors

We love these simple reclaimed wood tables from the Old Wood Co. in Asheville, N.C. The small furniture maker, which opened a year and a half ago, produces modern designs using oak and American chestnut lumber taken from condemned barns. “We’re taking material that would be used as firewood or end up in a landfill and we’re making something new and modern with it,” said owner Darren Green.

Each piece, including the museum bench/cocktail table, at left, and the woodie dining table, right, is made to order and can be customized to the desired dimensions. The furnishings also have the one-of-a-kind characteristics of reclaimed lumber: knots and nail and worm holes. Turnaround is six to eight weeks, says Green, who hopes to launch a less expensive line in the spring with certified wood. For pricing, contact (866) 967-9663. 

-- Lisa Boone

Photo credit: The Old Wood Co.

Ambient water heater premieres at Greenbuild

About 90% of the hot water that pours from Californians' bathroom and kitchen taps is warmed with natural gas, but all those hot showers and hand washings come with a cost. Burning natural gas pumps out hundreds of thousands of tons of greenhouse gas emissions each year -- and that's in California alone.

Tankless and solar water heaters are good options for reducing hot water's carbon footprint. Now a different system is premiering at the Greenbuild sustainable design expo, ending today in Phoenix. It's an ambient system that uses the heat naturally trapped in a home's attic to heat the water in an existing water tank. It's called the Greenward Ridge Vent System, or GRVS.

Developed by a construction contractor who thought there had to be a way to harness attic heat, the GRVS works by taking the trapped heat in the uppermost part of a house and channeling it through the roof's ridge vent, which is plumbed with tubing filled with a glycol-and-water mixture. The hot air warms the liquid in the tubes. That liquid then flows to a 70-gallon storage tank that heats the water coming into the house from the water utility. The system then transfers the heated water from the storage tank to the existing water heater, where it's available for use. The glycol-water mixture then returns to the roof to reheat.

'It's not a solar collector. It's an ambient heat collector," said Kevin Scott, president of Energy Alternatives, the Connecticut firm that makes the system. "At night, after you've used all your water, bathed your kids, done your dishes, your attic is still very hot. It could be 110 or 120 degrees, so your water is being heated while you're sleeping, so when you wake up you'll have preheated water."

According to Scott, an average family of four uses between 70 and 90 gallons of hot water each day; 60% of a household's monthly energy usage is to heat water.

The system can be designed into new construction or installed into an existing home. A new roof or new water heater is not required. Installation could be done by different contractors, Scott said. The ridge vent is best installed by a roofer, and the storage tank is the domain of a plumber. An HVAC specialist, Scott said, could do both.

The suggested retail price for the system is $3,599. With installation, the total cost would be about $5,000, Scott said. Information: www.nuenergyalternatives.com or (888) 565-8418.

-- Susan Carpenter in Phoenix

Illustration credit: Energy Alternatives

Al Gore calls for a green building revolution

Saying he "used to be the next president of the United States" and is now a "recovering politician," Nobel laureate and former Vice President Al Gore spoke Wednesday night at Greenbuild, the world's largest sustainable design conference, calling for a green revolution to solve the country's problems.

"We have a climate crisis at the same time we have an economic crisis at the same time we have a national security crisis," Gore said to a cheering crowd of thousands at Chase Field in Phoenix. "We need to create millions of good new jobs. Well, I know where we can get at least 2.5 million good new jobs: by building green buildings and retrofitting."

Gore and wife Tipper live in a 100-year-old house in Nashville that they green retrofitted, winning them the first gold LEED standard in the state from the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program. Gore's New York office is in the only platinum LEED skyscraper in that city, the Bank of America building.

"Almost 40% of the global-warming pollution in our country comes from old, inefficient, leaky buildings that don't have to be that way," said Gore, pointing out yet another inconvenient truth of American living to attendees of a conference that has drawn 28,000 this year and runs through Friday.

He pointed out that the U.S. market for green building products and services has grown from $7 billion in 2005 to $12 billion in 2007 to a projected $60 billion for 2010. He urged the green building movement to keep environmental standards high and to speak out against greenwashing. And he condoned continuing national legislation that would help homeowners pay the upfront costs of investments in green technologies.

"It's crucial to change the lights and windows, but it's even more important to change the laws and policies, so we as citizens have to speak out," he said. "Every single day in this world we're putting 90 million tons of global-warming pollution into the atmosphere. ... National academies of science in every major country have reaffirmed that finding, and they're shouting from the rooftops to say you have to do something."

Calling the environmental crisis "a challenge to our system of democracy," he also said Americans will be able to solve it.

"We have all the tools we need to solve three or four climate crises. We only need to solve one," he said.

Evoking the memory of John F. Kennedy's call to put a man on the moon in the 1960s, Gore said, "We as Americans have the capacity to do what we put our minds to. We have the ability to solve this crisis. We can do it."

-- Susan Carpenter in Phoenix

Photo: Al Gore at George Washington University in Washington, a previous stop on his speaking tour. Credit: Olivier Douliery / Abaca Press / MCT

The Dry Garden: Diverting winter rains from the streets to our flower beds

It stands to reason that some of the most progressive environmentalists in Los Angeles work for the Department of Public Works’ Bureau of Sanitation. They are the front line between what we discard and the environment.

Last week we looked at their fight to triage our system for recycling food scraps. This week the subject is their battle to capture rainfall before it enters L.A.’s massive storm drain system.

The bureau, along with a leading Southland water agency, the state Legislature and environmental nonprofit groups such as TreePeople and the Green LA Coalition are all moving to make harvesting rainwater as routine as recycling.

Rain shouldn’t be a pollutant, but as the Los Angeles Basin was steadily developed during the last century, the fields and meadows where the water used to infiltrate into the aquifer was steadily paved. 

So, when it rained, it flooded. By the 1930s the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began building what is now 1,500 miles of pipes and 100 miles of open channels to catch the water that flowed from our roofs and driveways into the streets and storm drains. This runoff was then fed into the Los Angeles River and Ballona Creek.

To channel that water better, the river and creek also were paved.

The result: On dry days, the Bureau of Sanitation reckons that 100 million gallons of runoff from sprinklers, car washing and the like fall untreated into the Pacific Ocean.

When it rains, that figure skyrockets to more like 10 billion gallons with each one-inch shower. When a typical rain year is over, 120 billion gallons, or enough water to serve a million households a year, will have swept through Greater L.A.’s streets into the Pacific.

Were it fresh water that we were discharging, it would be merely wasteful. But the minute that rain leaves our gutters, downspouts and driveways for the street, it begins picking up motor oil, candy wrappers, dog feces and cigarette butts. By the time it reaches the ocean, fresh rainfall is toxic crud.

Capturing rain is by no means simple, but a sea change in attitude has taken place. As L.A. Board of Public Works Commissioner Paula Daniels likes to say, whereas the 20st century goal was to get rid of water as fast as possible, the challenge of the 21st century is to keep it.

Concrete jungle? Slice it up and make it green

While the remodeled barn I discussed earlier this morning has been logging clicks galore, one gallery that I assumed would be a hit with readers last month went largely unnoticed. It's a DIY solution that could help a lot of urban yards, so let's give it a second look, shall we?

The project is a twist on something you've no doubt seen: Concrete broken up into rough-edged chunks, the borders planted with ground cover for a green, more naturalistic look.

But landscape designer Stephanie Bartron offers a different approach: Renting a power saw (and a saw operator), then slicing up a patio or driveway into geometric patterns for a clean-edged finish.

In the project pictured here, the cut-out concrete was then stacked to create an entry fountain. Debra Prinzing details the process in her article and accompanying photo gallery, which includes a step-by-step look at the process and a peek at a few finished designs.

Sketch out the cuts yourself, then hire a pro to handle the heavy machinery. Cost for a day's equipment and labor: about $1,000.

-- Craig Nakano

Photo credits: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times

The dirt on dirt: Do you know what's in yours?

What's in those bags of soil we buy at garden centers? Scotts, the company that makes soils under the Miracle-Gro, EarthGro and SuperSoil brands, uses discarded grape skins and seeds from Napa Valley, rice hulls from Stockton, even pecan and walnut shells. Other brands might contain bat guano, chicken manure, Canadian peat moss, Sri Lankan coconut coir or Norwegian kelp meal.

Susan Carpenter, who writes The Realist Idealist column on green home improvement and sustainable living, looks into bagged soil and how it's made for her latest report. It's a follow-up to her experience this summer, when Carpenter grew some beautiful chard in raised beds filled with store-bought soil -- then discovered her leafy greens were abnormally high in lead. For this latest column, she and colleague Don Kelsen also produced a video from their visit to one of the California facilities where bagged soil is made. Read Carpenter's findings, and then if you're eager to test your soil, click here.

For some gardeners, the bagged stuff just can't compare with homemade compost. The problem, of course, is that compost takes time and patience. For so many households, those food scraps are more likely to land in a garbage bag than a worm tray. Earlier this week Emily Green reported on San Francisco's new mandatory food-scrap recycling program and why our neighbors up north have pulled ahead of L.A. in the quest to divert trash from landfills. You can read that column by clicking here and see the archive of Green's weekly column on sustainable landscaping, The Dry Garden, by clicking here. 

Ask three experts for their recipe for the perfect potting mix, and you'll get three answers. That's what Ilsa Setziol did, and the three recommendations for the ultimate potted-plant dirt are revealed here.

-- Craig Nakano

Photo illustration credit: Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times

Sculptor-woodworker Alma Allen logs his work at Heath Ceramics; reception tonight

Alma Allen didn't come up with the idea of transforming tree trunks into side tables and stools, but during the past decade, the sculptor and woodworker behind the now-defunct Venice gallery Pearce has certainly refined the concept. His work has found its way into the vocabulary of art collectors and decorators, and his pieces helped to create a look that's been dubbed "rustic modern." Even West Elm has taken notice.

Allen, above, uses a chainsaw and lathe to turn salvaged woods into sleek forms. The interiors firm  Commune Design commissioned the artist, now based in Joshua Tree, to create side tables, above left, for the Ace Hotel in Palm Springs and stools for the Oliver Peoples store in Malibu, above right.

Allen recently teamed with Commune and Heath Ceramics to create a collection of Bauhaus-influenced pottery. The line includes canisters with lids that Allen crafted from solid walnut, right. They are priced $125 to $325. 

Heath Ceramics' L.A. store will be displaying and selling other recent work by Allen. Among the highlights: highly polished ironwood bowls and sculptures in marble and bronze that recall the work of modernist Constantin Brancusi and architectural tables made from slabs of solid wood and metal bases. You can see them after the jump.

From 5 to 8 p.m. today, Heath will host an artist's reception. It is free and open to the public. Allen's pieces will be in the store through the end of the year. 

The Dry Garden: L.A. trails San Francisco in the quest to divert food scraps from landfills

Jorge Santiesteban estimates that food scraps constitute roughly 15% to 25% of what goes into black garbage bins in Los Angeles. The city's solid resources manager has been struck by the seasonal changes in how much food we throw away since 1997, when, in the week after Thanksgiving, he had a garbage truck empty its contents for him. Santiesteban picked through the trash, putting like objects with like until a clear picture emerged. This is what is known in recycling circles as “waste characterization.”

As bad as it must have been for Santiesteban during that November audit of rotting giblets and pie crusts, his San Francisco counterpart might have had it worse. Waste characterizations done there show that as much as 30% of San Francisco’s garbage has been composed of food scraps.

Now the race is on to see which of the two cities can divert more kitchen waste from garbage trucks to composting programs. With the introduction of mandatory food-scrap recycling in San Francisco on Oct. 21, the Bay Area has taken the lead.

The challenge began 20 years ago, when overflowing landfills led California to pass the Integrated Waste Management Act of 1989. This required jurisdictions to divert 25% of their trash to recycling programs by 1995 and 50% by 2000. If cities failed, they faced fines of thousands of dollars a day.

It soon became clear that not every city had the same trash profile. While Los Angeles produced huge amounts of lawn clippings, garbage trucks in the more urban San Francisco showed a higher proportion of food scraps.