In 2008, there's no need to explain that a 'green kitchen' doesn't mean walls painted the color of sage or mint or lime or olive or even the lovely celadon. For anyone thinking about building a dream kitchen, environmental issues join long lists of considerations, even requirements.

About This Series
This is the second in a multi-part series about what choices cooks -- food bloggers in particular -- are making for their kitchens during the building and remodeling process. My thanks to the seven bloggers who so graciously are sharing their experience and knowledge so that the rest of us might benefit.

Part I - Building a Dream Kitchen
Part II - How Green Is My Dream Kitchen?
Part III - How to Select, Manage and Resolve Conflict with an Architect, Kitchen Designer and Kitchen Contractor (coming soon)
Part ? - That's up to BlogHer readers. If you have a burning question about a dream kitchen, if you can't seem to get a straight answer anywhere else, please, ask away. I'm willing to bet our seven bloggers will be happy to share their perspectives. (For practicality, please pose questions in the comments. I'll coordinate answers in future posts.)

Alright, back to green kitchens.

StephenCoooks
Food blogger Stephen Smith is an architect by profession so no surprise, his latest project for a dream kitchen in an historic home in Portland, Maine includes numerous green-kitchen features. Still, the work of an expert demonstrates how going 'green' in a kitchen requires research and (perhaps? professional help) and serious thinking about the balance between a modern life-style and green-living ambitions -- all to aid decision-making related to trade-offs between competing priorities and adaptations to the remodeling environment.

Stephen's recently described the green features built into his latest dream kitchen.

"The biggest green choice was the skylight with a splayed opening so that much less of the light entering through the skylight is lost to absorbtion by the walls. Because of this, there will be rare need to use artificial light in the daytime. The skylight does increase heat loss in the winter and heat gain in the summer, but the net gain from turning off the lights justified it.

Second, the new kitchen includes adequate space for recycling bins, one that matches Portland's waste management strategy that requires no homeowner sorting for recycling.

Third, we removed all the walls and ceiling and were able to replace the insulation. Because of the client's historic home allowed only two inches of insulation space in the walls, we used polyisocyanurate foam. This product is benign in terms of emissions but is not recylable and does not break down over time once the building is demolished. Still, the significant energy savings -- for the wintry state of Maine, after all -- out-weighed the life-cycle considerations.

Fourth, the client considered an over-sized dishwasher or possibly two dishwashers for entertaining since it often takes several loads to complete the cleanup. In the end, the choice was a smaller dishwasher that uses less water and is adequate for daily use, rather than a larger one that would have wasted water while providing only occasional convenience.

Fifth, we used recycled brass tiles for the backsplash, though that was mostly an aesthetic decision."

Several green options were considered and bypassed.

"We considered concrete countertops made by a local supplier but in the end went for the more familiar reliability of soapstone. While I’m not sure where the soapstone was quarried, it's likely that the energy cost to bring the stone to us was greater than the energy cost of the concrete, even when the high latent energy content of concrete is considered.

We considered having the cabinets made by a local firm but in the end decided to buy them from Crystal Cabinets in Wisconsin, due to previous good experience with their products.

Since the historic home had no existing gas line, consideration was given to an electric induction cooktop, which is very efficient. But no real cook wants to live without a gas cooktop so a gas line was put in."

~ More about this Maine dream kitchen & Stephen's food blog StephenCooks

Married with Dinner

Anita and Cameron started serious planning for their 1920s San Francisco home in 2006. If real estate is moved by 'location, location, location', then green choices are perhaps dictated by 'timing, timing, timing'. Anita recently wrote about her dream kitchen.

"Sadly, we didn’t really have 'green ideas for the kitchen' much in mind when we started planning our kitchen. I know things would be different if we were doing it over again.

But we did end up with a few ‘green’ elements: we used water-based varnish for the hardwood flooring; it had the added benefits of drying faster and smelling less although isn't as durable. We chose an energy star fridge. The room’s primary light is a compact fluorescent and the undercounter fixtures are traditional fluorescent tubing although we still have incandescents for some task lighting. We also reused as many existing materials as possible, doors, etc. We replaced the back door with double-paned and insulated French doors and replaced one window with a new double-paned glass window replacement pack Two other windows that don’t get a lot of weather were left as is. Because of all the new natural light, we’re able to leave the lights off most of the time during the day in all but the worst weather, definitely a big change from the old kitchen. We also added insulation to all the walls and ceilings of the remodeled rooms after discovering there was none!

When we re-do our roof in a year or so, we’re going to seriously consider taking the whole house solar. We made a lot of water-wise choices in the bath and laundry. We freecycled a lot of our leftover materials and appliances to minimize what went into the landfill.

Oh, and we have the most fabulous pull-out recycling center! It has three big bins: trash, compost, recycling. Our city has a curbside food-scrap composting program in which we put everything from yard trimmings to bones/fat to cheesy pizza boxes. Once a year, they give out five-gallon buckets of garden-ready compost to city residents and the rest is sold to local farmers.

We had planned to use cork flooring made from the scraps of bottle cork manufacturing. But we couldn't find the colors we liked, and were worried that the flooring mighg be destroyed by dog toenails. We also looked at sustainable countertop materials but they had serious drawbacks that we weren’t ready to compromise on.

Photo by Joseph De Leo courtesy Andrew Mann Architecture

~ More about Anita's dream kitchen & her food blog Married with Dinner

Dog Hill Kitchen
Maggie and her family are breaking ground -- soon! -- for a new house in Michigan. She rattles off terms which are the language of 'green', proving once again, that we must take charge of our own destinies. In kitchens and otherwise, we need to know what we want and be prepared to learn what we want too.

"We’re working with a builder/designer that specializes in green building. We plan on doing low/zero VOC paint, fiber cement shingles, bamboo and cork flooring, extra insulation, geothermal heat, energy efficent windows, water-saving toilets, and energy-efficent appliances. In the mud room, I have an area set aside for recycling and I’m thinking about Lyptus wood, a sustainably harvested wood, for the kitchen cabinets.

Since we have sixteen acres, in the future, we may put in a windmill or add solar panels but have decided against spending the money right now."

~ More about Maggie's dream kitchen & her food blog Dog Hill Kitchen

It's easy to see the care taken in decisions related to green kitchens now. But what about a few years ago?

The Perfect Pantry

When Lydia Walshin built her dream kitchen in 2000, she says, "I have to admit that greenness was not the top consideration for our current kitchen. But we did consider energy star ratings in shopping for our refrigerator and dishwasher. And we compost, which is perhaps the greenest thing we do. We’ve also banned paper plates and paper napkins even for picnics and cooking classes. We recycle whatever our town dump will take. We've replaced incandescent bulbs with energy-efficient coils in the lighting that isn't track lighting. One thing I wish we’d done is replace our old soft-pine flooring with a recycled and more easily-cleanable material. There are so many composites available now that were not available when we rehabbed our kitchen eight years ago." ~ More about Lydia's log cabin kitchen & her food blog, The Perfect Pantry

Food Person

"For better or worse, we didn’t have a high green consciousness when we planned our kitchen 15 years ago, although some cost-consciousness had green features. We chose warm flourescents for under-cabinet lighting rather than the more vogueish (at that time) mini-halogens. The other lights have dimmers on them, and the convection oven saves some energy. Also, we added wall insulation. I’m not sure whether our gas cooktop is more energy-efficient than the electric one it replaced. We also have deep-green countertops, but I don’t think that counts." ~ More about Janet's dream kitchen & her food blog Food Person

Are kitchens being built without directly considering environmental, energy and green-living options? Of course.

A Yankee in a Southern Kitchen
Oops. Kim Morgan Moss' kitchen is still under construction. "Green is my favorite color and I did repaint the wall three times, two different greens that didn’t work then finally decided on a off white. Oh no! Do you mean the other 'green'? I am hanging my head in shame as I didn't even consider the subject." ~ More about Kim's kitchen & her food blog A Yankee in a Southern Kitchen

Bistro 613

Shelley Rauch's new dream kitchen isn't consciously 'green' either but her story shows how 'green actions' are embedding themselves into our everyday practices. Shelley says, "I’m afraid that I really didn’t consider how 'green' my kitchen could be. That said, this is a big composting family: we’ve two separate massive piles of compost in the backyard that are in constant rotation. We also recycle as much as possible, and between the two, we put very little into the actual trash bin. Another plus would be our new and more efficient appliances." ~ ~ More about Shelley's dream kitchen & her food blog Bistro 613

More Resources
Washingtonian.com ~ Dream Kitchens: Green Kitchens
Google Video ~ presentation by green kitchen author Jennifer Roberts

BlogHer food editor and 'veggie evangelist' Alanna Kellogg's kitchen is as green as kitchens get. There's asparagus green, broccoli green, leafy green and even green salads.