After building your Colorado dream home, odds are you have leftover building materials you may not know how to properly dispose of. Here are some tips on what to do with your remaining materials:

• Tiles – Tiles can be used as coasters or broken up to be used as decorative wall mosaics. Use them in your garden as pathways or flowerbed borders. To dispose of them, place an ad on Craigslist or donate them to a local school, non-profit organization, or salvage yard.

• Bricks – Use your leftover bricks to build a firepit or an outdoor barbeque. If you can’t use them, call local bricklayers or landscapers or donate them to Habitat for Humanity.

• Wood – Scrap wood has endless uses. Build a bookshelf, a birdhouse, or get creative with rustic furniture frames. Your leftover wood can even be recycled and used for soil enhancement.

• Paint – You can always cover your paint can and use it later, or you can use it now to touch up old furniture. Check your states’ laws to dispose of your paint properly.

Contact us to learn more about what do with your leftover building materials as well as other tips for sustainable building and custom home design.

If you’re wondering about how to judge whether a product is green, here’s five good tips from Residential Design & Build magazine’s John D. Wagner.

1. Improves indoor air quality.

2. Uses recycled/recyclable materials.

3. Reduces water consumption.

4. Is sustainably harvested.

5. Reduces fuel consumption (carbon footprint) during manufacture, delivery, installation and use.

As Wagner writes, it’s easy to separate what’s “green” from what’s “greenwashed” if you keep these 5 basic green principles in mind: “When you do this, you’ll find that green building really is a rather old-fashioned approach to building. It produces tight, well-vented, low-maintenance structures that don’t use lots of fuel to heat and cool themselves, and contain nontoxic products and materials that don’t permanently deplete their sources when harvested.”