Common Ground

The House that Dan Built:

Common Ground is the name of the conservation group at my church. We meet once a month and have different speakers. This month we had THE Dan Phillips. I want to introduce you to him if you haven't heard of him already. Dan has even been featured on HGTV's "What's With That House". He's been in People Magazine and on CNN and many other media outlets. Dan lives in Huntsville, Texas. He builds home out of salvaged materials that were destined for the landfill. He is most interested in helping single mothers, low-income families and artist. What most of us see as trash, Dan sees as ceiling or flooring material and many other imaginative ways of using items.

Another thing I admire about Dan is he uses unskilled laborers to build these homes. For instance, He teaches a person to lay tile or do carpentry and then after they develop a marketable skill he "kicks them out the nest" and sends them off to get a "paying job".

Here are samples of his work.

The picture at the top is Dan's vision of a storybook house. He built this house for a single woman who is an artist. This house is located in Houston. There is a project starting in Houston based on Dan's building philosophy called Discovery Green Project.

These are old frame samples from a framing store that were being thrown out when the store received updates samples. Dan created a beautiful ceiling for one of his houses:

The picture below shows a floor that was made from corks from wine bottles.

Go to Dan's website http://www.phoenixcommotion.com/ and check out his work and videos. You can see the passion he has for the environment and more importantly helping people.

Remember, your trash may be another man's treasure (or floor, or ceiling, or countertop). So think twice before you throw it away and always recycle what you can.

Stay Green,