So, this evening I attended a discussion held by our friend, Blue Crump, of Cityspace Construction at the new Whole Foods in Short Pump. I’ve been wanting to catch one of his classes for some time now, and he did a great job teaching attendees about residential solar options to help offset energy consumption (and costs). His presentations are down-to-earth and make green construction and renovation concepts easy to understand. Blue offers free classes there and at Ellwood Thompson’s to share green ideas with homeowners throughout the Richmond area.

Feel free to visit the Cityspace website for more information on this business and their free educational classes.

We’re excited to share with you that Richmond now has its first green retail home-improvement store, EcoLogic!

EcoLogic is located at 1606 W. Main Street in the Uptown district of Richmond, and carries a variety of beautiful products available for making your home a better and healthier place. Among the products carried at EcoLogic are natural linoleum, salvaged hardwood flooring, cork flooring, soapstone and slate countertops, PaperStone countertops (yes, they’re made from paper), recycled glass tile, eco-friendly paints and earth plasters (our favorite, American Clay), and LED lighting.

At Dramatic Changes, we use AFM Safecoat products and American Clay, and we are thrilled that Fred and Stephanie have chosen to carry them in their store. These great products deserve all the attention they can get! For more information on EcoLogic, feel free to stop in their store for a tour, or you can visit their website here.

The Richmond Symphony Orchestra League will soon present its 13th Designer House. The beautiful home, Tara II, a distinctive white mansion, is located close to the Country Club of Virginia, and towers over its spacious front lawns and looks onto Cary Street.

There will be approximately sixteen design areas which will be transformed into individual showcases for some of Central Virginia’s most renowned and up and coming interior designers. Dramatic Changes is fortunate to have been brought in to paint several of these spaces, and we’re providing a few “before” pictures in this blog entry.

The Designer House will make its debut at an elegant Gala Opening Night Party on Friday, September 12 and open to the public September 15 through October 12.

For more information, including how to purchase tickets, visit this link.

A little while back, we posted a picture of a bathroom that needed a bit of color help. The combination of salmon-pink tile and mint green appliances was a little much for the owner. She struggled to choose a color to balance them out. Here’s the update on the color that was chosen for the walls - Chocolate Brown! What do you think? Do you have any nightmare rooms in your house that need some color support? For more color consulting ideas, visit the Hue blog.

In our little paint world, it’s easy to think about the products we work with every day and forget about the bigger picture. Why are we driven to offer healthier products to our customers? There are a lot of reasons. In this entry, we share a lecture given by Alex Steffen during the 2005 TED conference. What is TED? TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Their annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

In this lecture, Alex Steffen challenges us to look at our world through a broad lens. The small choices we make each day, including using healthy materials in our homes, can make a big difference…

I received an email today from the James River Green Building Council that referenced a recent article published July 18th on Richmond.com. It talks about the practicality of making our homes “green”, and whether or not it really is cost-effective. Many of the people I talk to feel like making their homes eco-friendly is unaffordable. Additionally, much of what we hear on the news talks about what’s happening in other parts of the country. What’s happening here in Virginia? This article references several local professionals who are working to make green buildings a reality for homes and business spaces alike.

For resources and supplies for making your home a healthier place to live, consider a visit to EcoLogic, a green home supply store that’s slated to open in mid-August on Main Street in the City of Richmond.

I am a subscriber to a great color blog called Hue, and today I received the most recent post from author Rachel Perls who’s in the process of painting her new home in California. Her bathroom is a clash of two very distinct colors, mint green appliances and a peachy, rose-colored tile. She’s trying to figure out what color to paint it. What would you suggest? At one time or another, we’ve probably all been in her shoes!

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Each month, we help secure sponsors for Richmond Green Drinks, an international organization that seeks to bring together people from the green industry once a month for a casual networking event. This month’s event drew around 70 people, our largest crowd to date, and was held at Richmond’s new Built Gallery in Oregon Hill.

One of the people who helps me organize Green Drinks, Copeland Casati, contributed a post about this month’s event on Building Green TV’s website. To see the post, click here.

If you’d like to learn more about Green Drinks, or want to meet someone in Richmond’s green building industry, feel free to contact us. We’re happy to help.