Walking through the corridors of Swedish Medical Center in Seattle last month, I couldn't help but notice how different this place felt compared to the sterile, fluorescent-lit hospitals of my…
Walking through my friend Sarah's newly renovated farmhouse last month, I couldn't help but run my fingers along the reclaimed chestnut beams spanning her kitchen ceiling. The wood told stories…
Walking through a Pottery Barn last month with my sister, who was shopping for her new apartment, I found myself doing that thing I always do – mentally cataloging the…
You know what really gets me fired up? Walking into someone's home and seeing that gorgeous dining table they bought three years ago already showing wear, or worse yet, hearing…
You know those mornings when you wake up and something just feels… off? I used to have way too many of those before I started really paying attention to how…
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the difference between renovation and restoration, especially after some conversations with folks in our church building committee. We’re trying to figure out what…
My neighbor Marcus stopped me in the hallway yesterday while I was hauling up another grow light from Amazon (don’t judge, Patricia and her friends needed an upgrade). He looked…
You want to see something that’ll make your blood boil? I was walking through this massive new subdivision outside Denver last week – 300 homes, all identical, all facing whatever…
I got a call last month that really got me thinking. It wasn’t about my kids’ school this time – it was from a mom in our neighborhood whose company…
My colleague Jennifer from the chemistry lab stopped by my office yesterday, looking frustrated. She’d spent her weekend trying to refinish an antique dresser using what the store promised was…
A colleague brought a bamboo cutting board to our lab meeting last month – thing had been through fifteen years of daily kitchen abuse and still looked decent. “If bamboo…
# Why Some Spaces Make You Feel Like Crap (And What I Learned From Fixing Mine) Yesterday morning, I was messing around with my little tabletop fountain again – you…
# What I Learned About the Regenerative Design Process After Accidentally Killing My Yard So this is going to sound ridiculous, but my obsession with regenerative design started because I…
I was dropping my friend Sarah’s daughter off at school last month when I accidentally took a wrong turn and ended up in the basement hallway of Roosevelt Elementary. Honestly?…
# When Buildings Actually Give Back – My Journey Into Regenerative Design I stumbled across this concept totally by accident. Last summer, I was procrastinating on weekend data entry work…