Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Home Depot's Eco Options


Last week, Mrs THIT and I were shopping for our new appliances. Or rather, Mrs THIT had shopped previously, decided on everything, and took me to Home Depot to show me what I would like.

I kid. We had the same priorities and colour choices, but I'll admit I did not know how expensive those damn things could get. And why should I pay so much for an oven when I never use it?? ;-)

Anyway, on our way out, my green-hunting eye spotted a stack of magazines by the cash registers. While Christine was going through the self-serve cash (Have you seen these?! Amazing!), I perused said magazine.

It's called "Eco Options" and as the link will demonstrate, it can be viewed online as well.

The information in there is hardly ground-breaking (though I did learn a few things about bamboo. Little did I know there was anything to learn about bamboo!), but it's laid out quite nicely and clearly for those who aren't really knowledgeable about such things (something I can relate to).

And it's a freebie, so what the hell? Gave me something to flip through at the gym the next night.

Arguably as important was their tendency to highlight potential money savings from trying their tips or featured products. I'm a big believer in that. If you switch to CFL's, you can't see your impact on the environment. But you can see it on your power bill and no doubt that's part of the encouragement for many people. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a factor for me.

In any event, if you happen to walk through a Home Depot store, by all means grab a copy for yourself. I doubt you'll be disappointed.

Speaking of CFL's, we recently had to have some wiring repaired here for a light fixture that didn't work. That's now done, but the need for bulbs to match caused us to use the two CFL's we had left. That makes six around the old place now (though two are in lamps and therefore coming with us). The person moving in continues to get greener and greener without realizing it.

As for us, we're apparently going gray. We visited El Casa again this past weekend to find a couple of walls standing now. Not all of them, but a couple. It's a start. And while we were there, Christine also wanted to visit the model in order to measure windows.

The saleslady there told me that by now our brick selection should have been made, which was
something we'd stressed over a little. We didn't really dig the one used for the model...




...but we're told that for us the brick will actually be gray (though it appears almost brownish in some light, strange as that may be to imagine) with beige siding.

At least they're real colours. None of that "cream / eggshell / pearl / bone" nonsense from before...

Truly, we're quite pleased. There were only four colour combination options we could have ended up with and the one we're getting was a close second. Options three and four fell well behind. Overall, we're finding that we're quite fortunate with this entire experience and we're hoping that holds true just a couple more months.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is that a model pic of your house? If so, what are all the entences for?

Anonymous said...

Pardon my spelling I meant Entances. Just curious.

T.H.I.T. said...

Sort of. Our house is one of four attached. We only have the right portion of that picture (but it was the only one I could find). Our part starts from the double garage doors. Our main entrance is on the far right.

It's kind of an unusual concept in that the front door is at the end rather than on the side like you'd see on most town homes.