Dreaming Green» Dreaming Green Eco Fabulous Homes Designed to Inspire by Lisa Sharkey and Paul Gleicher

New York House: The Faces of Sustainable Interior Design

Tim — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 21:03:47 +0000

Paul Gleicher, President of Gleicher Design Group

Paul Gleicher is an accredited LEED practitioner who focuses on providing alternatives to his clientele on how they can live a healthier lifestyle without compromising the look and design of their homes or building.

During the designing, Gleicher’s company shows its clients many options of materials, pushing to incorporate cabinetry with no formaldehyde, fabrics with no toxins, and counter tops with recycled glass.

Gleicher and his wife co-authored Dreaming Green, a coffee table book filled with photographs and a list of resources for making your home green.

Gleicher has redone his own house, using the green practice he preaches. He believes his home is an inspiration for clients to show its easy to renovate green without sacrificing aesthetics.

“In the future we will see an amazing interest in interior design, more so than the past decade,” Gleicher said. “The future outlook will be more focused on how clients can spend their money, wanting more bang for the buck. And focusing on their personal environment, using green technology to make their environment healthier without sacrificing the look.”

Welcome…

Lisa Sharkey — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 23:14:37 +0000

Welcome to the companion site for our new book, “Dreaming Green Eco-Fabulous Homes Designed to Inspire”. Just five years ago, when our family began a top-to-bottom green renovation of a Manhattan brownstone, it seemed like a completely radical decision. Even though I’m in media and always up on the latest studies and trends, and Paul is an architect, earth-friendly design never seemed like a viable option for us. As city dwellers, it was something we associated with hippie living – picturing far-out houses with roofs made from soda cans, wind generators in the back yard and lifeless brown hemp fabrics. It took an emotional meeting at an environmental fundraiser with a couple who built an eco-friendly house after they lost a child to an environmental cancer to make us aware of the link between health and home. As parents of three growing children, we are concerned about the environmental toxins our family is exposed to every day, and we’d introduced organic produce, natural beauty products and homeopathic medicine into our home. However, we didn’t know about the lurking dangers most of us have inside our homes. It was frightening to learn that items we all have such as mattresses, cabinets and rugs, contain toxic chemicals like flame-retardants, formaldehyde, and volatile organic compounds. What’s worse is that those chemicals stay in our homes for years, off-gassing into the air we breathe and causing a host of potential problems that are being linked to diseases such as asthma, cancer and Alzheimer’s.

After that life-changing meeting, Paul and I knew that for the health of our planet and for our children, we had to go completely green. To be completely honest, though, we didn’t know exactly what that would entail; it was literally like stepping into an entirely new world. We can tell you however, that it was one of the smartest and best decisions we ever made.

The homes featured in our book are exceptional. But one day, green building will be the rule and not the exception. We hope you’ll join us in this revolutionary ideal by sharing your ideas and exploring the world of green living as we all learn how to live more healthy lives.

- Lisa Sharkey and Paul Gleicher

You can read more about our green townhouse plus 16 more urban, suburban and rural green homes in our book, “Dreaming Green”

On sale Now. You can order your copy here:

Our Green Townhouse

Lisa Sharkey and Paul Gleicher — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 18:53:22 +0000

My husband, Paul and I have long had a love affair with Manhattan’s idyllic Upper West Side. We think the family-friendly neighborhood, with it’s scenic blocks of nineteenth-century brownstones and its easy access to parks and schools, is the perfect place to raise our children, Greg, Doug and Casey. But finding the town house of our dreams in our beloved neighborhood was challenging. When we started looking five years ago, we knew we needed to find a wreck because that was the only way we could afford a house in our price range, but, boy, did we get one.

The four-story c.1885 home that we purchased had been converted to rental apartments and stripped of all its original character. Thankfully, having an architect in the family has its benefits, and Paul could see beyond the flaws. Knowing he could completely transform the space, we happily prepared ourselves to tackle a major renovation.

Early in the process we decided that almost every aspect of the renovation was going to be green – from the gut job to design. We wanted a healthy house with chemical-free, natural materials. First on the agenda was disposing of hazardous waste properly to avoid contaminating any landfills, so we called in an enviromental engineer who helped us remove the and the leaky oil tanks in the cellar. Next, we saved what we could from the old house, and even items we couldn’t use, like warped and cracked wood Joists, which we donated to a salvage flooring company. To provide cleaner more dust-free air quality than forced air, we went with an ultra-efficient boiler and slim-profile radiators.

Asthetically, we longed for a gorgeous and sophisticated house with rich textures, beautiful shapes and glorious color that would work for our lively family.

You can read more about our green townhouse plus 16 more urban, suburban and rural green homes in our book, “Dreaming Green”

On sale now. You can order your copy here: