Darnestown Contractor Wins Award for Green Remodeling

In early December, -- using his own property as a testing facility for his company's green energy endeavors.

Months later, the President of Tabor Design Build, Inc. received recognition for his home project, winning the Metro DC chapter of the National Association of the Remodeling Industry's Contractor of the Year Award for Green Remodeling: Entire House.

Patch caught up with Tabor to talk about the award, future plans for his company, and green energy remodeling:

Patch: What was your initial reaction to receiving the Contractor of the Year Award for Green Remodeling: Entire House?

John Tabor: We were very excited to learn that we were being given this award by our fellow members at the National Association of the Remodeling Industry’s Metro DC chapter. Promoting green remodeling is very important to me. It is an honor to be recognized by my peers as being worthy of this prestigious award.

Patch: The initial project was completed on your own home. Did you have any reservations about using your house as a "guinea pig" for future projects?

John Tabor: I have no reservations about using my own home as a guinea pig.  New and improved green building products are always coming out, some with fantastic performance claims by the manufacturers. To read some of the advertising copy, you would think these products assemble and install themselves, then cut your utility bills in half. To find out how difficult and expensive these products are to build with and how well they perform, I use my own home as the guinea pig.

That way if something goes wrong and the product doesn’t work as advertised, the worst thing that will happen is we will have to do something over again. Since we have already thoroughly tested the products, our clients can rest assured that they work.

Patch: This award definitely brings more credibility to your company. Have you seen business increase in recent months and do you expect it to increase following the recognition?

John Tabor: We are seeing more interest in green remodeling from our potential clients due to the publicity from this award. As we are one of the few green remodeling companies in our area, we expect business to increase.

Patch: Are you currently working on any projects in the North Potomac-Darnestown area? If so, to what extent?

John Tabor: We aren’t remodeling any homes in Darnestown right now. We just finished a kitchen in Gaithersburg with white painted cabinets and granite tops, and two bathrooms in a house in Rockville. One of the bathrooms has a new claw-foot tub and marble tile. Right now we are remodeling a whole house, downtown in Fairmont Heights, with all new bathrooms and kitchen.

Patch: If you could give one piece of advice to someone considering green remodeling of their home what would it be?

John Tabor: At Tabor Design Build, we find that green remodeling is not only good for the environment, it’s good for your wallet. To us, remodeling green means making your home more efficient, healthy and comfortable for your family. We’ve been dedicated to green building ever since our company began, long before it was popular to be green.

Your utility bills don’t have to go up when you enlarge your home. We made our home about a third larger and decreased our utility bills by about a third. Highly efficient HVAC systems, solar panels, better insulation and "low e" windows are a great investment and will save you a lot of money.