Chocolate limestone from Lueders, TX
When Karen Lantz, a Houston architect, was in high school, the Armco steel plant where her father had worked for two decades shut down.
“He was 47,” she said. “It was tough.”
He found other jobs, but the financial loss stung, and the family’s options became more limited.
Lantz put herself through community college and then architecture school at the University of Houston. Now 37, Lantz is a working architect, but in 2009, when she started planning her dream house in the grip of a recession, her father’s experience weighed on her.
People all over the United States were out of work; if she bought American-made products for the house, she could do her part. But how far could she take it? Was it possible to build a house entirely of products made in America?
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Some things were easy. Lantz traveled to a quarry in Lueders, Tex., to find chocolate-brown limestone. The marble chips that made up her terrazzo came from Marble Falls. She found Heatlok Soy 200 foam insulation in Arlington and windows manufactured in Stafford. Other items required her to look further afield: Lantz bought shower drains from Iowa, a skylight made in South Carolina, hose valves made in Alabama, fences from California and baseboards from Georgia. She developed the skills of a private investigator.
Read more at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/magazine/the-almost-all-american-home.html?_r=1&ref=realestate
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