La Grange House Seeks LEED Certification

In La Grange, we like our old homes. Driving down the streets it's not rare to see several homes on one block that are over 100 years old, and still lending charm and character to the community. But not all change is bad.

Janet and Anthony Lewandowski are no strangers to rebuilding. This is their fourth home in the La Grange area after renovating a house in Willow Springs and a house on Bluff Avenue. But this time, they're hoping to build La Grange's first LEED-certified home—one that is sustainably sourced and environmentally friendly.

LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, and is a certification process for "green" buildings through the U.S. Green Building Council. It's not an easy certification to get—you can't just screw in a few environmentally friendly light bulbs and call it a day. LEED-certified homes must meet strict guidelines for the products used and requires documentation of each step in the process.

Home of the Future?

Don't expect to walk into the Lewandowski's new home on Edgewood Avenue and step into the house of the future. Overall, the home doesn't look all that different from many La Grange houses, but then, that's the idea.

"We want it to be approachable, and it has to blend in with the identity of the neighborhood," Janet told me as I toured the home recently.

The new place still looks rough. A giant blue tarp covers the front of the house and contractors are still working on the inside, but the elements are in place.

The walls are over eight inches thick and the windows are triple-pane glass to provide solid insulation. The floors are made largely with poplar—a quick-growing sustainable wood. All the paint, stains and glues used to build and decorate the home is VOC-free, which means they don't give off toxic gases. All of the appliances and the lighting in the home is Energy Star certified, and the house is wired for solar panels, which the family plans to install in time.

Additionally, when the old home was being torn down, the family invited neighbors and friends in to salvage whatever they wanted, which meant the water heater and toilet among other things found new homes as well. Other materials were placed in a dumpster out front to later be separated and recycled.

"We've been very hands on in the process," Janet said.

Anthony is a trained architect and the couple went through many plans that they designed themselves before agreeing on it's current layout, which includes lots of southern-facing windows to let in light and an interesting upstairs attic/bedroom which their son has already claimed. Janet said the plan is to commission an LT art student to graffiti the walls of the bedroom with symbols and pictures of all the places the family has traveled.

"It's going to be a great party house," Anthony said as he showed me where the bar would go, complete with a beer and wine fridge.

The Green Inspiration

The family’s inspiration to go green came together as two halves to create a whole.

"We tend to have these completely separate journeys where we end up coming back together at the same place," Janet said.

Janet is a breast cancer survivor of over four years now, and said that looking at her mortality made her rethink her life and the things in it. Janet was looking for a way to live more naturally. Her husband, on the other hand, went to Masar—a green city that is being built in Abu Dhabi to work for six months on a project in 2008. Anthony returned with his own ideas for green building in La Grange and together the couple began to talk about building their next dream home in 2009 before purchasing the property in 2010.

"But it's not really about us," Janet said as Anthony nodded in agreement. "It's for our kids and as an example of what you can do."

The desire to share their experiences and document the process is ultimately what led them to start a blog—and a time capsule.

The Home as a Time Capsule

Part of the LEED process is documentation. Since they needed to do it anyways, the Lewandowskis figured, why not make it available to everyone?

And so, they started House of Lews on BlogSpot (definitely worth a read) to document and share the entire process.

"One reason is just to get people to start thinking about green building," Anthony said.

When the home is completed the blog will continue for the first year the family lives in the home as well. They will track the expenses of the building process as well as post bills statements showing the home’s energy savings.

"Searching for a lot of this information can be really frustrating," Janet said of the process. "We wanted to put it up so that others could track the progress with us and get an idea of where we found things—what worked and what didn't."

When it's finally completed, the blog will be printed out and bound into a book, which the family will add to the time capsule they're building—comments from the public and all. Also included will be artifacts from the kids, photos of the neighborhood as it is currently and other personal items.

"In a hundred years, we hope someone will tear down the wall it is behind and discover it," Janet said. "When they do they'll be able to see what life was like and the reasons we did what we did."

First Completion, Then Party

The family has been living in a small rental house during the construction and is eager to move in. After some final touches are in place, they plan on throwing an open house party to invite neighbors and friends to enjoy the fruit of their labor.

"Everyone [on the block] has been really welcoming and supportive," Janet said. "They also have a lot of questions, so it's going to be nice to show everyone around and say thank you for all their support."