American Clay Enterprises has announced the winners of its second annual Makeover Contest. The contest asked professionals and Do-It-Yourself home remodelers to submit projects demonstrating their renovating skills using the company’s earth plasters.
Selena Hoit, of Hayden, ID, received both the grand prize and an honorable mention in the professional category (project pictured below), while Michele Kolb, of Nantucket, MA, is the grand-prize winner for the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) category (project pictured above). The contest was judged by leaders in the green building field, including: Mary Cordaro, president of Mary Cordaro Inc. a certified Bau-Biologist; Eric Corey Freed, LEED AP, Hon. FIGP, author, green building expert and principal of organicARCHITECT; Kelly LaPlante, eco-interior designer and founder of Standard Magazine; and Danny Lipford, home improvement expert and host and executive producer of the television show Today’s Homeowner with Danny Lipford. American Clay CEO Croft Elsaesser also participated as a judge.
For the contest, professional applicator Hoit created an Old-World look for her client’s living room by using American Clay’s Loma in acacia with Mud Glue as a primer and Loma in acacia as a topcoat. She also used the colors Savannah moss, Palomino valley and Tuscon gold brushed to create the effect of aged clay or, in essence, a fresco.
Kolb renovated a historic 1747 Nantucket house, the first LEED certified historic house renovation on Nantucket. She installed American Clay walls in Porcelina’s sugarloaf white with a lime wash to resemble what the original 1747 walls may have looked like and to achieve LEED points for healthy air and recycled products. It was used in the living room, bath, stairway and master and children’s bedrooms.
Second place in the professional category went to Justin Evans, of Dallas, for his condo remodel. All common room walls and hallways were finished with Lomalina, then compressed and lightly burnished with specialty trowels. Honorable mention also goes to grand-prize winner Hoit for her second project submission, a guest room in a 5,000-sq.-ft. home. The room’s fresco-like result required special aging and blending skills.
In the DIY category, the runner-up is the team of Brian and Margaret Gertz, of La Quinta, CA, for the remodel of their Lake Havasu vacation home. After initially using American Clay for the ceiling between beams, the result was “even more beautiful than we expected,” they noted, that they expanded the product’s use to all the walls in their kitchen, living room, entry and informal eating area.
