Eco Building Guild's Green Slam Event: Zack Semke & Jeff Pelletier, Representing Hammer & Hand and Board & Vellum - Cropped for Featured Image

Other Tangents

Eco Building Guild’s Green Slam Event

For the second year in a row, a Board & Vellum project was selected for the annual Green Slam Event, organized by the Northwest Eco Building Guild. This time, we teamed up with Hammer & Hand to brag about our great clients and their quest for a more sustainable lifestyle in their remodeled Ballard Locks Residence.

Tina Witherspoon – Meet a B&V'er – Board & Vellum Team
Tina Witherspoon
October 28, 2015

On Saturday, a bunch of B&V'ers gathered at UW's Kane Hall to cheer on the annual Green Slam event organized by the Northwest Eco Building Guild. For the second year in a row, a Board & Vellum project was selected for the presentation! This year we teamed up with Zack from Hammer & Hand to brag about our great clients and their quest for a more sustainable lifestyle.

Jeff and Zack presenting the Ballard Locks Residence

The project that Zack and Jeff presented was our recently completed Ballard Locks Residence. Click the link to view all the photos in our portfolio.

Ballard Locks Residence: Green Home Remodel – 4 Star Green Home
4-Star Certified Built Green Home

This whole house remodel in Ballard reinvented this 1930s home as a model of sustainable practices. Ballard Locks Residence | Photo by John G Wilbanks.

Being avid cyclists, our clients found a home to renovate that was within biking distance from their employment. It turned out to need a lot of work to modernize it both in terms of design and functionality, but we were all up to the challenge! One of their project requirements was to limit the impact of their footprint on the neighborhood by cycling to work, and this became the sustainable cornerstone for this program. A whole house remodel requiring a re-imagining of a tired, inefficient, and challenging 1980’s remodel of a 1937 home, we saw the potential for an energy-efficient, long-lasting, and beautiful transformation that would last for decades more. This house reaps the benefits of salvaging embodied energy while looking towards the future.

Ballard Locks Residence: Before Images
Eco-slam-cover-collage

The above collage is composed of images of the house before we started work.

The program called for a layout of open living spaces focused on the breathtaking Olympic Mountain views connected by a central hall in lieu of the chopped up and dated floor plan that came with the house. Our design brief was focused to take full advantage of the views but more importantly, button up the house to improve air quality – it was really, really hot, stuffy and overheated - it just wasn’t built right. We kept all the existing framing that we could, packed it with insulation, providing a seamless air barrier around everything and added a Heat Recovery Ventilator. Now the house feels clean and comfortable.

We specified great new windows and opened up the second floor which allowed the light from the upper floor to spill down to the main floor. The end result is a generous entry and a house that feels cohesive and with generous daylighting drawing you through the home. The new layout also works much better for entertaining and no longer divides the space. The modern built-in cabinetry is integral to the architecture of the home. It can be easy to overlook the incredible attention to detail that transforms this house into a home that sustainably looks to the future while not ignoring the legacy of the past.

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