You can find tons of “free” and low cost recycled materials that can be used for building a hybrid house. I use the term “free” loosely because when you count in your gas and time, it is not completely free. Free doesn’t mean “ta da! It’s done!”, it means “cool, look at the stuff we collected and the things we can make out of it!”. That being said, you can find many people ready and willing to give you their “trash” if you just come pick it up. What kind of “trash” do I mean?

Free:

1. Glass bottles. Glass bottles are available all over the place. Go to any restaurant, bar, or friends house and you can get all the bottles you need for those beautiful walls you see on Pinterest all the time.

2. Tires. You can go to any tire shop and they would be more than happy to give you all of the tires they would just throw away. Why? Because they pay to take the tires to the landfill. Some people say you can actually make money by taking the tires, but I feel that it is best to just take them off their hands, and make a new contact for the future. Not only are they happy to let you take them, but they will be more willing to keep and ear and eye out for anything else you may be looking for.

3. Rocks. They are ALL OVER. If you know what you want to use them for, you can find them anywhere and make something like this:

Low cost:

1. Windows. You’ll find that there are a ton of people selling perfectly good and reusable windows. Just look online (Craigslist, Facebook, Online yard sale lists, and the local paper), in the papers, and by just driving around. Some people wanted to build their own house and decided not to, are moving and had some in storage, or bought a window that did not fit. Another good place to look for any materials, including windows, is your local Habitat for Humanity ReStore. They have a good selection of materials at a very low cost.

Here are some that we were able to get at a very good price (one window is broken but the frame is great):

2. Doors. The same as windows, you can find people selling doors for cheap that may need a bit of work.

I can’t wait to sand this down and stain it!:

Doing some groundwork can save you a lot of money even if it takes more of your time. It is worth it to plan your build ahead of time in detail and make a clay model. By making a clay model you can visualize how many of what and where you want to put certain things and actually “see” how it could look. That way, when you do need to buy a bigger purchase item (super large windows for example), you may not need as many as you initially thought, and can use smaller refurbished cheap or free things you’ve collected to take up the majority of the space.

We’d like to thank DSP Pizzeria here in Pagosa Springs, CO for taking their time to collect and hold bottles for us! Not only do they have the absolute BEST pizza in town, but they are super nice and amazing people! We’ll start cutting and making our glass bricks for our walls soon! And to all of our friends who have saved all of their bottles and cans for us too!

(Our first attempt to cutting the glass. Not too bad!)

And a special thank you for our first donation! Every bit helps and we really appreciate everyone who is going out of their way to help us with this project. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

In building using recycled materials, the saying is really true, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”. Don’t worry about collecting too many materials because what you don’t use, someone else can!