I think I?m like a lot of people when it comes to going green or the basic understanding of what it is to make an effort to reduce my footprint on the environment.

Home improvement and home renovation on its own is somewhat a green undertaking. We are recycling our old house and not buying a new one, upgrading instead of replacing, customizing rather than discarding. If you are a diehard do-it-yourselfer then you can wave the recycling banner even higher.

With those of us who like the do the work on our own house by ourselves, we are by nature ?going Green.? We re-use screws from cans and jars while doing our remodeling. We take the time to turn over boards in the pile behind the shed because we just can?t be bothered driving to the lumber yard to buy a 2X4 when we are sure there is one in there somewhere.

Yes, we undeniably waste far too much time digging through piles of lumber or coffee cans of parts to find just the one little item we needed. But why not? The time doesn?t cost us anything. We need to look through these boxes and tubs anyway from time to time just to be reminded what we got there.

I was installing a used sink yesterday that had been lying around for a long time. Because it was a steel sink it only looked bad, but after I cleaned it up it looked just fine. The time I spent rejuvenating the sink saved me a couple hundred bucks that I would have spent on a new one.

The only trouble was that the special bolts that I needed to fasten the sink down tight were missing, or at least most of them were. The sink was pretty old when it was given to me and I have had it kicking around for a few years so my best guess was that the sink was over 20 years old. What are the chances of me finding these special bolts on the shelf at the local hardware store?

Well, as I could have predicted the bolts I needed were discontinued years ago and I would have to find some other way of securing the sink to the counter. I put that job off for the moment and carried on with a search for other parts that I needed to fasten the old tap set down that I was going to use in concert with the newly rehabbed sink.

While digging through one of the cardboard boxes that litter the floor of my shop I found one that looked like it was full of old plumbing parts from the seventies and eighties. I found the special nuts I needed for the tap set rather quickly. But much farther down in the box I spotted an odd looking bolt.

There they were, lying in the bottom of a water-damaged box for who knows how many years, waiting for opportunity to be called out of retirement and back into service. Boy, was I happy to stumble onto these dumb bolts. I guess years ago I just couldn?t see myself throwing away perfectly good sink bolts. Who knew?

This is the real world of do-it-yourself home renovations and repair. You sure couldn?t afford to pay for the time if a contractor was doing all the searching, sink cleaning or lumber scavenging. It would be far cheaper to buy a new sink and have him install it. Having to pay for someone to dig through the lumber pile never works out in your favor. The bill for the time will be much bigger than cost of buying new 2X4?s.

Sadly recycling is rarely cost effective when it comes to building materials. A 2X4 costs about $4.00; the cost of paying someone to sort through for one board and pull the nails out of the old ones will be much more than that. Recycling works for those of us that can ignore the taunts and jeering about why is this taking so long. This is important business, this reducing our carbon foot print.

I saved over 200 bucks re-using the sink and the tap set; my only cost was a full day time to do what could have been done in less than two hours if I had bought a new one. But I still have my two hundred bucks.