Home Renovation Tip - Making Your Home Environmentally Friendly

There are many companies that specialize in "green" (good for the environment) materials and renovations. You can find these companies on the Internet or often at your local building supply company. These businesses sell only products that have not been chemically treated. For example, you can find interior paints with little or no VOCs (volatile organic compounds). Also available is insulation material that comes from recycled cotton, denim, bamboo or cork. Whatever your renovation needs, you can find just what you need for "green" living.

Wood is an important part of "green" renovations. Look for wood that has been certified by the Forest Stewardship Counsel; this is an assurance that no fragile environments have been harmed in the harvesting of the trees. Many companies specialize in using recycled building materials such as recycled wood or plastics. Imagine - kitchen counters made of recycled paper! "Green" materials are durable, require little maintenance, and look great!

You'll have no trouble finding conventional building materials. Since most people are either unaware of, or are not concerned about, environmental issues, there's no shortage of traditional materials. "Green" materials are harder to find unless you know where to look. Investigate many Internet sites before you buy, and when visiting local stores, ask specifically for environmental safe materials. These materials are not only ecologically safe, but they're hypoallergenic as well. If you choose, you can renovate your entire home with "green" natural materials.

There are other ways to make the environment and your home compatible. Try adding natural lighting via solar panels and skylights. Small, round holes can be added to your roof frame to make room for these natural lighting wonders. Many companies create solar panels for homes that look just like roofing tiles! Using these techniques can considerably lower your electric bill.

Using natural insulation, replacing existing windows with energy-efficient wood or dual-paned glass and using flooring options from recycled glass will make a tremendous difference in how your home lives in harmony with the environment. Recycling and reuse is all-important! Materials that would normally be discarded in a landfill are now being collected and re-sold to "green" minded home owners for renovation projects.

As we become more aware of the impact of our modern lifestyles on the delicate ecology of Planet Earth, more people are turning to "green" renovations. Unless we truly commit to maintaining the beauty and viability of our environment, it's not the meek who will inherit the Earth, but the landfills!

Author Steven Gaines takes us from New York's most expensive condominiums and co-ops to the offices of its most powerful real estate brokers to reveal the outlandish displays of ego, bad behavior, and status hunger that come into play when the best addresses in the city are on the line.

With his signature elan, Gaines weaves a gossipy tapestry of brokers, buyers, co-op boards, and eccentric landlords and tells of the apartment hunting and renovating adventures of many celebrities - from Tommy Hilfiger to Donna Karan, from Jerry Seinfeld to Steven Spielberg, from Barbra Streisand to Madonna.

Here, too, is a fascinating chronicle of the changes in Manhattan's residential skyline, from the slums of the nineteenth century to the advent of the luxury building. Gaines describes how living in boxes stacked on boxes came to be seen as the ultimate in status, and how the co-operative apartment, originally conceived as a form of housing for the poor, came to be used as a legal means of blackballing undesirable neighbors.

A social history told through brick and mortar, The Sky's the Limit is the ultimate look inside one of the most exclusive and expensive enclaves in the world, and at the lengths to which people will go to get in.

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