It was ironic that Sandy Kreger’s house in Scio Township sat on 1.5 acres of land, but when it came time to build an addition on to her 1977 ranch along Huron River Drive, she was hemmed in.

Her well and garage sat to the immediate north and the chimney and skylights prohibited building to the south. Three bedrooms were at the west end of the 1,400-square-foot house, and wouldn’t mix well with the kitchen and exercise room she wanted to add.

The house was set at an angle at the eastern edge of the property, leaving little room for an addition. Building a second story was cost prohibitive. And there is no basement.

But architect Keith Fineberg had an idea: Build the addition on the east side, parallel to the setback line, creating a wedged shape addition but using almost every inch of allowable land.

Within the 500-square-foot addition, Fineberg added an open and airy kitchen and breakfast bar that opens into the dining room and living room, a half-bath and an exercise room. He also added storage and pantry space, needed because the house sits on a slab and has no basement.

While Kreger needed more space and was on a tight budget, she also wanted to be green. She chose carpeting made from recycled materials, sustainable flooring for the kitchen, dining area and exercise room, repurposed bathroom lights and mirror and a poured cement kitchen countertop dotted with bits of glass collected from friends and family.

When Kreger bought the house in 1994, it had sat vacant for two years. It had shag carpet, dark paneling and no mortgage company would touch it unless the roof was replaced. Outside, it was overgrown.

“It was a giant, disgusting pit of a house,” she said. “But I fell in love with it.”

She liked the land and the idea of being off of Huron River Drive, where she could bike and run. And it had skylights._

Kreger slowly made changes: She replaced the roof, ripped out the carpet, painted and removed a half-wall with 1970s-style bars at the entrance to the living room.

But that didn’t solve the problem of the pint-sized kitchen and her desire to get her exercise equipment out of the middle of her living room.

“Only one person could be in the kitchen at a time and you couldn’t open the refrigerator and oven at the same time,” Kreger said. She contacted Fineberg.

“When Keith first came, he didn’t say ‘Nice to meet you. How are you,’” Kreger said. “He said, ‘This is not a kitchen. It’s a hallway.’”

Fineberg moved the front door to the right, in space where the old kitchen was located. He moved the kitchen into the addition, installing one window on the north wall and wrapping a line of six more windows along the east wall. He tucked the half-bath and exercise room behind the kitchen, separating them from the rest of the house.

“It gives that area of the house privacy,” he said.

While Kreger was watching her budget, she also wanted to be as green as possible. The carpeting in the living room is made from recycled pop bottles, she used no-VOC paint and installed dual-flush toilets.

She selected poured concrete kitchen countertops that carried bits of glass donated by friends: Beer and wine bottles, perfume bottles, cracked mirrors and more. Each piece -pieces of amber, blue and green floating in the concrete - is a reminder of an event or a friend, Kreger said.

The skylight in the kitchen uses a solatube, a mirrored tube that maximizes daylight. It is covered with a prismatic diffuser and it creates enough light to look like a light fixture.

She found a mismatch of $1 knobs at a local lumber store for her kitchen cabinets, used old trim from the part of the house that was demolished as shelving, reused the maple cabinets from her old kitchen (matching them for the new cabinets needed for the new, bigger kitchen) and went with bamboo flooring from a sustainable forest for the kitchen and exercise room. She reused windows for the exercise room, installed a cast off ceiling fan and was able to use a mirror and light fixtures a cousin was going to throw away.

“It felt like a barn raising,” Kreger said. “I was asking everyone for their junk.”