Leave it to the bloggers at Remodelista to find attractive recycling bins, we love their ten picks.

Tom Givone's current weekend abode, nicknamed the Floating Farmhouse, is—so far—his capstone project, a synthesis of personal taste, material experimentation, and historically sensitive restoration: a living laboratory for how to bring the vernacular past into the present.

Overhead cabinets now can be easily swung open for ease of access. The kitchens are priced at IKEA’s usual retails. A 10 by 10 foot kitchen fitted with Sektion cabinets will range from around $1,300 to $2,200, excluding appliances.

Black and white kitchen tiles add visual interest to this stunning modern kitchen by IKEA.

The slightly below-ground kitchen sits inside a boxy extension, clad in recycled timber and stained kettle black. A wildflower garden grows on its pitched roof.

Architect Stefano Girodo explains the building has a “completely prefabricated and modular structure.” It was built using recyclable and environmentally friendly materials and designed to ensure easy mechanical assembly once on site.

The house architects Teresa Sarmiento and Nicolas Tovo designed for their family—including 1-year-old Clara, for whom the structure is named—is a celebration of recycled materials.

A tiny outbuilding offers a cozy living space inside a simple shell.

As the facade of a Bates Masi-designed home in Water Mill, New York, rises from eight to 14 feet high, the mahogany planks subtly widen. “It was quite a demand to make of the contractor,” architect Paul Masi says. “But the design was so much about traveling through the site and weaving [the house] together with the deck.”

Fed up with flashy, environmentally insensitive beach homes, architect Gerald Parsonson and his wife, Kate, designed a humble hideaway nestled behind sand dunes along the New Zealand coastline. Crafted in the image of a modest Kiwi bach, their 1,670-square-foot retreat consists of a group of small buildings clad in black-stained pine weatherboards and fiber-cement sheets.

The family spends summers and school vacations at the bach. New Zealand's relatively mild winters mean they use the house year-round.

Tanya Wexler and Amy Zimmerman linger in the breezeway designed to draw eyes, and footsteps, from the driveway through the house to the gently sloping backyard and swimming pool beyond.

Kayak in hand, Tom and Will make a break for the beach.

The cabinetry in the kitchen and elsewhere is crafted from discarded, chopped-up billboards. White paint camouflages their fronts, but when pulled open, their colorful sides offer a glimpse of their previous life as streetside advertising.

Villa Welpeloo in Enschede, the Netherlands, doesn't look like a recycled building. Its austere lines and spacious interior have nothing of the junkyard aesthetic about them. Yet despite appearances, it's reused to the bones. To accomplish this, architects Jan Jongert and Jeroen Bergsma reversed the typical order of the design process—first house, then materials—and instead began by scouting the local area for items to recycle.

The steel-and-wood stairs lead to the master bedroom and study.

Toolbox by Loll Designs. This minimal toolbox is made of 100% recycled plastic material that doesn't rust and cleans easily. Its easy to grab, rust-proof handle makes it perfect for indoor and outdoor use.

Recycled Wine Glasses by Uncommon Goods Handmade in Colombia, these pale green wine glasses fulfill easy entertaining requirements: sturdy, simple, and dishwasher safe. $28 for set of two

Intended for squeezing into narrower spaces, the Butterfly Recycler by Simplehuman has room for trash and recycling in one compact package.

Reclaimed materials: Recycled building materials can cut construction costs while simultaneously forging a link with the past. “Be alert about what is being taken down in the area and talk to homebuilders,” Campbell says. “There may be more opportunities than you think.”

A view across the display island to a breezeway betweent the house and the garage that Pacek and Roynon created as part of their home addition. They use the space for entertaining and food service when the weather cooperates.

A Lakeside Prefab in New Jersey A New Zealand expat and her son use their prefabricated lakeside New Jersey retreat as an outdoorsy counterpoint to city life. Photo by: Mark Mahaney Curious on what was popular last week? Click here!

IKEA chairs join a table from CB2; a Kawneer triple-sliding door opens to the family’s new ipe deck.

The Irwin pool house designed by Landis Gores in 1957 boasts a central room with high ceilings and an unobstructed view of the landscape. In 2005, the Town of New Canaan purchased the property and added exhibition spaces, as well as rooms for lectures and events. The small pavilion also houses an oversized, monumental brick fireplace design that divides the main space from the kitchen area.

The exterior mixes pale gray wood on the vertical volume, and fiber cement and black brick on the horiztonal volume. The three trees in the front yard were maintained during the renovation process.

Using natural materials is one way of bringing nature indoors. Oiled white ash floors and ceilings, along with Italian poplar and Lawson cypress joinery, are found throughout architect Andrew Simpson’s 538-square-foot home outside Wellington, New Zealand.

In the kitchen, the cabinetry is walnut veneer with a weathered finish applied by cabinetmaker David Rogers. “The process involved sanding and rubbing in stain as well as adding a clear finish,” project architect Eero Puurunen says.

Induction cooktops, growing steadily in popularity due to their energy efficiency and speed, are part of the offering as well as as a selection of exhaust hoods.

A 17-foot-tall freestanding play structure that designer Sharon Davis designed for her family in upstate New York can only be entered by climbing taut netting and entering through a trap door. Descending requires sliding down two structural-columns-turned-fire-poles.

Much of the cooking and cleaning takes place at the rear counter, which is outfitted with an Evoke faucet by Kohler.

The wood-frame residence and studio are clad in vertical cedar siding—back then, a daring competitor to clapboard—instead of concrete to save costs. The effect is equally seamless, however: “If you drive by it fast enough,” Charles Gwathmey once said, “you still might mistake it for a concrete house.” Photo by Norman McGrath.

The kitchen, which sits at the center of the house, features recycled glass countertops, Ikea cabinets, and carbonized bamboo floors. “We had Thanksgiving dinner there,” says the daughter. “There’s no sense of the house as small. It feels like a house.”

From the outside, the house appears as a composition of cubic volumes that barely hints at its reused nature. Expanses of glass, skylights, terraces, and balconies all strengthen the relationship between inside and outside and make the interior uniformly light.

Can't find the right table for your space? Another option is to have a custom top cut for a recycled base, which is what the Deams did for their outdoor dining area. They had an existing Scissor table base by Bay Area designer John Randolph sitting unused, so Chris had a piece of hardy soapstone (it stands up to high temperatures) cut to match by Fox Marble. A subtle facet at each corner plays off the base's design and lends a more intimate feel to the long table. For a fraction of the cost of a full piece, the bases of design classics are often available on Craigslist and eBay.

The steel frame of the house was entirely recycled from mill machinery formerly employed in the region's textile industry, which has since declined. Leaving the steel skeleton visible in places, as here, makes a tangible link with local history.

A cart full of recycled clay.