Salvaged materials

Practical Preservation Podcast featuring John High of Barn Saver

John High of Barn Saver joined the Practical Preservation podcast to discuss his work recycling barns.  He shared that 30% of our waste is construction by recycling either through architectural salvage or moving the barn he is helping to keep these pieces of history out of the landfill. John’s wife, Linda Oatman High, wrote a …

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Practical Preservation Podcast Featuring Tom Brennan of Green Garage and the El Moore

Tom Brennan, co-founder of The Green Garage and the El Moore, in Detroit, MI, joined the Practical Preservation Podcast to discuss these properties as innovative examples of sustainable working and living spaces. We covered multiple topics, including: Background information about Tom and his wife and co-founder Peggy, and how they came to initiate and complete …

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Practical Preservation Podcast Featuring Sam McKelvey and Alice French of the Menokin Foundation

Sam McKelvey and Alice French – executive director and director of education – of the Menokin Foundation in Warsaw, VA, joined the Practical Preservation Podcast to discuss their preservation project, and the Foundation’s many services. We covered multiple topics, including: Sam and Alice’s respective backgrounds in history, preservation, and related fields, and how working at …

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Practical Preservation Podcast Featuring Briana Grosicki of PlaceEconomics

Briana Grosicki, associate principal of PlaceEconomics based in Washington, D.C., joined the Practical Preservation Podcast to discuss the economic benefits of preservation. We covered multiple topics, including: Briana’s background, including growing up regularly visiting local battlefields in Virginia, volunteering with her main street district as a teen, to working with Donovan Rypkema  Briana’s additional roles …

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Bathrooms: A Necessary (Room) Discussion

BATHROOMS – or whatever you call them, as they have many names – are a necessary part of our lives, but we often take them for granted. Bathrooms did not always exist as a dedicated room, and the conglomeration of fixtures and practices that occur in these rooms today, as well as the design of …

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Preservation and Sustainability

Preservation and sustainability. What does one have to do with the other? If we examine these terms more closely, we can see that older buildings are inherently “green” or sustainable because of “embodied energy” (all of the energy used to build the building that would need to be expended to build something else). In fact, …

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