What if your daughter's autism diagnosis was not autism at all, but a mold-induced inflammatory response that could be reversed? In this episode, Ashley sits down with Cristina, founder of Conscious Healthy Home and former corporate attorney, for one of the most powerful origin stories this podcast has ever shared. Cristina's family spent years living in a home with mold compacted inside the HVAC plenum, watching their daughter regress in ways that three years of speech, occupational, and physical therapy could not explain, before a single question from a functional medicine doctor finally cracked the case. When the inflammation was addressed, the behaviors stopped, the diagnosis was removed, and Cristina's entire sense of what mattered began to change.

Together Ashley and Cristina walk through the full arc of what it looks like to discover mold in a home, navigate insurance denial, find a remediator fast, move out, move into a rental that also had moisture in the plenum, test forty homes with ERMI before finding one that was safe enough, and then slowly put a family back together on the other side of all of it. They also dig into what Consciously Healthy Home does now, including a real estate agent certification program that helps agents ethically and legally market themselves as healthy home specialists, why no one can promise a mold-free home and what the right language actually looks like, and why the mold space desperately needs people who lead with solutions instead of fear.

This one is for anyone who has felt like every door keeps closing and wonders whether they are being redirected rather than defeated. It is also for every parent who trusted their gut when the system told them to stop asking questions.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Conscious Healthy Home realtor certification program: https://www.conscioushealthyhome.com/realtorcert
• ERMI testing for mold (referenced throughout as part of home search process)
• CIRs, chronic inflammatory response syndrome
• Shoemaker Protocol
• Building Biology Institute
• Passive House Network
• HVAC plenum mold and UV light limitations
• Colorado Green Building Guild

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Ashley helps you renovate and build healthier homes to prevent future health issues from arising from your environment. Whether you’re searching for a new home, assessing concerns with your current one, or embarking on a renovation or new build, Awakening Spaces can guide you every step of the way.

Ashley brings her background in Building Biology and Building Science and years of hands-on experience helping families build and renovate homes to prevent mold, chemical exposure, and EMFs in their living spaces. If you’re looking to build or renovate a new home, Ashley has courses to empower and one on one offerings to guide you through the whole process so you can avoid costly mistakes and enjoy the process again!

Curious about how we can help with your project? Explore our offerings here.

CONNECT WITH GUEST
Instagram | Website

Cristina Greenfield, J.D. is the founder of Conscious Healthy Home, LLC, a healthy home consulting and homeowner representation firm based near Houston, Texas, serving clients nationwide. A corporate attorney with 15+ years of legal experience, Cristina holds certifications as a Certified Passive House Builder (PHIUS), Building Biology Advocate, and Healthy Materials Advocate from the Parsons School of Design. She also serves as an Advisor on the Air Advisory for the International WELL Building Institute. Her work sits at a rare intersection — combining legal advocacy, building science, and a deep personal mission rooted in her own family's journey through toxic mold exposure. She trains real estate professionals through the CHH Realtor Certification Program and serves as Vice President of Malachi's Message Foundation, a nonprofit supporting families affected by toxic mold.

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What happens when an interior designer watches her husband get taken down by mold toxicity, CIRS, and Lyme disease and realizes that everything she was putting in their home was making him worse? In this episode, Ashley sits down with Kaleigh Concannon, founder of Uniquely You Decor and one of the only non-toxic interior designers in Denver, for a conversation that is equal parts practical, personal, and genuinely eye-opening. Kaleigh's path into this work runs through Seattle during COVID, a moldy apartment in LA, a Denver home that tested positive for black mold after purchase, a GC who spilled asbestos and got the house condemned, and three and a half years of watching her husband deteriorate before he finally got the right diagnosis.

Together Ashley and Kaleigh dig into what non-toxic interior design actually means in practice, why green and sustainable do not automatically mean healthy, how cleanwashing is manipulating well-intentioned consumers every single day, and what the biggest offenders are when it comes to furnishings that are quietly harming the people living with them. They also get into what to do when you cannot afford to start from scratch, why certifications are often more marketing than protection, and why bamboo flooring, recycled polyester, and antimicrobial paint are three examples where the sustainability story and the health story are telling you completely different things.

This one is for every homeowner who has ever felt overwhelmed trying to figure out what is actually safe to bring into their home, every designer who has not yet connected their material selections to their clients' health, and every partner who has wondered whether to believe what they cannot see.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Kaleigh's monthly newsletter: https://www.uniquelyyoudecor.com/newsletter
• Toxic by Design event for interior designers (annual, Denver)
• CIRs conference Fort Lauderdale, June 2026
• Dr. Eric Dorninger, Roots and Branches, Boulder: [drdorninger.com](http://drdorninger.comhttps://drdorninger.com/)
• Coyuchi organic bedding and pillows: coyuchi.com
• AFM Safe Coat sealers and paints: afmsafecoat.com
• EC3 cleaning products for mold remediation
• Mindful Materials guide
• Colorado Green Building Guild

CONNECT WITH ASHLEY
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Ashley helps you renovate and build healthier homes to prevent future health issues from arising from your environment. Whether you’re searching for a new home, assessing concerns with your current one, or embarking on a renovation or new build, Awakening Spaces can guide you every step of the way.

Ashley brings her background in Building Biology and Building Science and years of hands-on experience helping families build and renovate homes to prevent mold, chemical exposure, and EMFs in their living spaces. If you’re looking to build or renovate a new home, Ashley has courses to empower and one on one offerings to guide you through the whole process so you can avoid costly mistakes and enjoy the process again!

Curious about how we can help with your project? Explore our offerings here.

CONNECT WITH GUEST
Instagram | Website

Kaleigh Concannon is the founder and principal designer of Uniquely You Decor, a non-toxic interior design firm based in Denver, Colorado serving clients across the country. After watching her husband navigate mold toxicity, CIRS, and Lyme disease over the course of several years, Kaleigh transitioned her twelve-year career in advertising and marketing into interior design with a singular focus: furnishing homes that support human health rather than undermine it. She presented at the SursX conference in 2025 and runs an annual event called Toxic by Design to educate fellow interior designers on the health implications of the materials they specify every day.

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What happens when the attorney who spent years suing companies like DuPont for deceiving consumers about toxic products becomes the patient who gets taken down by mold, Lyme, and CIRS? In this episode, Ashley sits down with Karen Bloom, founder of Natural Haven, for one of the most layered and honest conversations this podcast has had on what it actually takes to detox your home, your body, and your life at the same time. Karen's path runs through a traumatic ankle break in Shenandoah that triggered a cascade of mysterious symptoms nobody could diagnose, years of pharmaceuticals that made things worse, a bullseye rash nobody connected to Lyme until it was too late, and mold hiding in her HVAC that took multiple rounds of air testing to finally catch.

Together Ashley and Karen dig into the difference between greenwashing and cleanwashing and why even well-intentioned consumers get tricked by both, what certifications actually mean and which ones are nearly meaningless for health purposes, the top offenders in nurseries and fertility-focused homes from EMF-emitting baby monitors to off-gassing furniture adhesives, and why the nervous system piece of healing is not optional and cannot be outsourced to supplements alone. Karen also brings her attorney's skepticism to every product claim she evaluates, and what she shares about how to actually read past the marketing is genuinely invaluable.

This episode is for anyone navigating chronic illness, trying to create a healthier home for a baby, or simply exhausted by the impossible task of figuring out what is actually clean versus what just says it is.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Karen's fertility and healthy home course: naturalhavensb.com
• Karen's free guides and home detox resources: naturalhavensb.com
• Tech Wellness hardwired baby monitor: techwellness.com
• Bebe Care audio baby monitor (referenced as lower EMF option)
• REACH database for EU chemical safety information
• Dr. Andrew Heyman, integrative medicine Virginia (referenced)
• Shoemaker Protocol for CIRS treatment (referenced)
• Brownell Landrum wishing episode of The Awakening Spaces Podcast
• Riun Ashlie EMF and nervous system episode of The Awakening Spaces Podcast
• Book referenced: Your Biography Becomes Your Biology
• Feldenkrais Method for nervous system and movement rehabilitation

CONNECT WITH ASHLEY
Instagram | Tiktok | Youtube | Website

Ashley helps you renovate and build healthier homes to prevent future health issues from arising from your environment. Whether you’re searching for a new home, assessing concerns with your current one, or embarking on a renovation or new build, Awakening Spaces can guide you every step of the way.

Ashley brings her background in Building Biology and Building Science and years of hands-on experience helping families build and renovate homes to prevent mold, chemical exposure, and EMFs in their living spaces. If you’re looking to build or renovate a new home, Ashley has courses to empower and one on one offerings to guide you through the whole process so you can avoid costly mistakes and enjoy the process again!

Curious about how we can help with your project? Explore our offerings here.

CONNECT WITH GUEST
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Karen Bloom is a consumer protection attorney and the owner of Natural Haven, a healthy home consulting practice creating homes that support families’ health. She provides non-toxic product recommendations, mold guidance, and healthy building and renovation consultations. Karen's path to healthy home consulting work and education was personal. She spent nearly a decade with a debilitating chronic illness stemming from CIRS, Lyme disease, mold toxicity, and all that goes with it.

She is deeply passionate about helping people who are struggling with what she once did and formed Natural Haven to help people reduce their toxic exposure in their homes and calm down their nervous systems.

Karen draws on her background as a consumer protection attorney where she brought multi-million dollar cases against major corporations, like Dupont, for selling products with harmful chemicals without warning consumers of the harmful chemicals.

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Most people buying a home are thinking about square footage, school districts, and whether the kitchen has been updated. Almost nobody is thinking about what is behind the walls, under the floors, or in the crawl space until they are sick and the remediation quote arrives. In this episode, Ashley sits down with Rachel Klein, licensed real estate agent and healthy home advisor based in Boulder, Colorado, for a conversation that every homeowner and prospective buyer in America needs to hear. Rachel bought a home, got sick from it, spent months figuring out why, and came out the other side with a completely different approach to how she represents her clients.

Rachel walks through what a healthy home-focused real estate process actually looks like from the very first conversation, why she does an environmental walkthrough before her clients ever set foot in a property, what red flags she is flagging in the Colorado market that most agents would never mention, and why the seller's property disclosure is one of the most underused tools available to both buyers and sellers. They also cover dirt crawl spaces, spray foam, whole home humidifiers, swamp coolers, attic fans, flat roofs, and what freeze-thaw cycles in Colorado are doing to older homes that nobody is talking about.

This episode is for anyone buying, selling, or even just thinking about their next home. It is also for anyone who has ever felt like they were the only one asking these questions in a room full of people who had no idea what they were talking about.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Dr. Terry Fox episode of The Awakening Spaces Podcast
• Brownell Landrum wishing and manifestation episode of The Awakening Spaces Podcast
• Stacy Levy, somatic guide: https://www.stacylevyyoga.com/coaching
• Erica Bonfanti flat roof episode of The Awakening Spaces Podcast
• Ashley's Awakened Homeowner guide: https://awakeningspaces.com/awakened-homeowner
• Awakening Spaces offerings and Conscious Construction Container
• Colorado seller's property disclosure requirements
• Moisture detectors and whole home leak detection systems

CONNECT WITH ASHLEY
Instagram | Tiktok | Youtube | Website

Ashley helps you renovate and build healthier homes to prevent future health issues from arising from your environment. Whether you’re searching for a new home, assessing concerns with your current one, or embarking on a renovation or new build, Awakening Spaces can guide you every step of the way.

Ashley brings her background in Building Biology and Building Science and years of hands-on experience helping families build and renovate homes to prevent mold, chemical exposure, and EMFs in their living spaces. If you’re looking to build or renovate a new home, Ashley has courses to empower and one on one offerings to guide you through the whole process so you can avoid costly mistakes and enjoy the process again!

Curious about how we can help with your project? Explore our offerings here.

CONNECT WITH GUEST
Instagram | Website

Rachel Klein is a licensed real estate agent in Colorado and healthy home advisor with the Goodacre Group at milehimodern in Boulder. After purchasing a home that made her seriously ill with mold-related symptoms, Rachel combined her personal recovery journey with her real estate practice to create a process that helps buyers find healthier homes and sellers present their properties with greater transparency. She is building a national network of like-minded agents and educating colleagues on how to advocate for clients with health sensitivities in the real estate process.

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Most homeowners never think about their building envelope until something goes wrong. And by then, the mold is already there, the sheathing is already rotting, and the remediation quote is already six figures. In this episode, Ashley sits down with Erika Bonfanti, structural engineer turned building enclosure specialist and forensic consultant, for one of the most practical and eye-opening conversations this podcast has had on what actually keeps water out of your home and what happens when it does not.

Erika breaks down what an envelope consultant actually does, why they are not the same as an architect, and why bringing one in on the front end of a project is one of the most cost-effective decisions a homeowner can make. They go deep on flat roofs specifically, covering why membranes fail, what happens when you put a deck or pavers on top of one, why the seals around every penetration need to be replaced every two to three years, and what the building code actually requires for above-deck insulation in cold climates that almost nobody is following. They also walk through a real project in Santa Fe where all of these issues converged at once and what the solution actually looked like.

This episode is for anyone buying, building, or renovating a home with a flat roof, anyone who has ever had a leak they could not locate, and anyone who wants to understand what good looks like before something goes wrong.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• ASHRAE technical committee on health and buildings
• IRC and IBC requirements for above-deck insulation ratios by climate zone
• TPO, PVC, EPDM, and modified bitumen membrane types
• Infrared scanning for flat roof moisture detection
• Dense-pack cellulose and denim insulation in flat roof assemblies
• IECC energy code insulation requirements

CONNECT WITH ASHLEY
Instagram | Tiktok | Youtube | Website

Ashley helps you renovate and build healthier homes to prevent future health issues from arising from your environment. Whether you’re searching for a new home, assessing concerns with your current one, or embarking on a renovation or new build, Awakening Spaces can guide you every step of the way.

Ashley brings her background in Building Biology and Building Science and years of hands-on experience helping families build and renovate homes to prevent mold, chemical exposure, and EMFs in their living spaces. If you’re looking to build or renovate a new home, Ashley has courses to empower and one on one offerings to guide you through the whole process so you can avoid costly mistakes and enjoy the process again!

Curious about how we can help with your project? Explore our offerings here.

CONNECT WITH GUEST
Instagram | Erika’s IG | Website

Erika Bonfanti is a principal at Acton Partners and a building enclosure specialist and forensic engineer with over fifteen years of experience in condition assessments, leakage investigations, material distress evaluation, and enclosure design on new, existing, and historic structures. She applies her deep knowledge of how and why buildings fail to consulting and design peer review work with the goal of improving the hygrothermal and functional performance of enclosure systems.

Erika currently serves as chair of ASHRAE TC 1.12, Moisture Management in Buildings, and is a dedicated board member of Preservation Austin.

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If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and leave us a rating/review! Thank you for listening ✨

What happens when the host becomes the guest? In this special episode of the Awakening Spaces Podcast, Ashley's dear friend and building biology colleague Zara D'Cotta flips the microphone and interviews Ashley herself, pulling back the curtain on the work Ashley does behind the scenes on every project she touches. From the lawsuit that changed everything in her early career to what owner's rep work actually looks like day to day.

Ashley walks through how a project gone wrong became the foundation of everything she does now, why oversight is the single biggest indicator of project success, and what it actually means to advocate for a homeowner in a room full of specialists who all have different opinions. She also gets candid about her own health journey, what finally shifted after years of outsourcing her healing, and why neurofeedback, morning walks, and learning to stop scanning her environment for threats changed things more than any supplement protocol ever did.

This one is for every homeowner who has ever felt overwhelmed by decisions, every builder or designer who wants to understand what a healthy project team actually looks like, and every practitioner in this space who has ever wondered how Ashley holds it all together. Spoiler: she is still figuring it out too, and that is exactly what makes this conversation so good.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Conscious Construction Container: https://courses.awakeningspaces.com/ccc
• Zara D'Cotta, The Healthy Home: thehealthyhome.com.au
• Building Biology Institute: buildingbiologyinstitute.org
• Green Building Advisor: greenbuildingadvisor.com
• Building Science Corporation: buildingscience.com

CONNECT WITH ASHLEY
Instagram | Tiktok | Youtube | Website

Ashley helps you renovate and build healthier homes to prevent future health issues from arising from your environment. Whether you’re searching for a new home, assessing concerns with your current one, or embarking on a renovation or new build, Awakening Spaces can guide you every step of the way.

Ashley brings her background in Building Biology and Building Science and years of hands-on experience helping families build and renovate homes to prevent mold, chemical exposure, and EMFs in their living spaces. If you’re looking to build or renovate a new home, Ashley has courses to empower and one on one offerings to guide you through the whole process so you can avoid costly mistakes and enjoy the process again!

Curious about how we can help with your project? Explore our offerings here.

CONNECT WITH GUEST
Instagram | Youtube | Website

Zara D'Cotta is a Building Biology New Build Consultant, Electromagnetic Radiation Specialist, and founder of The Healthy Home in Australia. After navigating two cancer diagnoses and years of environmental illness across multiple water-damaged homes, Zara made it her mission to bridge cutting-edge research and real-world building practice. She holds both the BBNC and EMRS certifications, placing her in a small group of building biologists globally qualified to integrate EMF awareness with moisture control, material health, and healthy design principles into mainstream construction.

Today she works with builders, designers, and industry organizations across Australia and beyond through her Healthy Building Materials Mastermind, her Low EMF Home Design and Construction course, and her consulting and speaking work with some of the most forward-thinking organizations in the built environment.

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If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and leave us a rating/review! Thank you for listening ✨

What does it take to go from two cancer diagnoses and years of undiagnosed mold illness to becoming one of the most quietly influential voices in the healthy building industry? In this episode, Ashley sits down with her dear friend and longtime colleague Zara D'Cotta, building biology educator, electromagnetic radiation specialist, and founder of The Healthy Home in Australia, for one of the most personal and wide-ranging conversations this podcast has had. Zara's path into healthy building ran through a breast cancer diagnosis at twenty-nine, a melanoma two years later, and a slow, devastating journey through multiple water-damaged buildings in Sydney before she finally understood what was happening in her body and decided to do something about it at industry scale.

Together Ashley and Zara explore what is happening in Australia right now that the US building industry should be paying close attention to, including landmark 2023 National Construction Code changes that officially recognized mold as a hazard to human health and opened the door to lawsuits against builders and designers for mold in walls and roofs. They also talk about what it actually looks like to educate builders on EMF, why so many of the builders Zara works with are now taking electromagnetic radiation seriously enough to carry meters on site, and why the supply chain is finally starting to ask better questions about material health. And because this is the Awakening Spaces podcast, they go there on astrology, human design, and what it means to build a life and a business that is aligned with who you actually are.

This one is equal parts building science, lived experience, and soul. If you have ever wondered what the healthy building conversation looks like from the other side of the world, or what it looks like to rebuild yourself from the inside out while also trying to change an industry, this episode is for you.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Building Biology Institute BBNC certification program: buildingbiologyinstitute.org
• Safe and Sound Pro RF meter (used by builders in Zara's programs)
• Use code: AS5 for 5% OFF
• Mitch Marchand, EMF specialist (referenced for collaborative site testing)
• ClimaSure hygrothermal analysis (Jess, Building Biology Podcast Australia)
• Enduro Builders, South Australia
• Wood fiber insulation and ProClima weather resistive barrier

CONNECT WITH ASHLEY
Instagram | Tiktok | Youtube | Website

Ashley helps you renovate and build healthier homes to prevent future health issues from arising from your environment. Whether you’re searching for a new home, assessing concerns with your current one, or embarking on a renovation or new build, Awakening Spaces can guide you every step of the way.

Ashley brings her background in Building Biology and Building Science and years of hands-on experience helping families build and renovate homes to prevent mold, chemical exposure, and EMFs in their living spaces. If you’re looking to build or renovate a new home, Ashley has courses to empower and one on one offerings to guide you through the whole process so you can avoid costly mistakes and enjoy the process again!

Curious about how we can help with your project? Explore our offerings here.

CONNECT WITH GUEST

Instagram | Youtube | Website

Zara D'Cotta is a Building Biology New Build Consultant, Electromagnetic Radiation Specialist, and founder of The Healthy Home in Australia. After navigating two cancer diagnoses and years of environmental illness across multiple water-damaged homes, Zara made it her mission to bridge cutting-edge research and real-world building practice. She holds both the BBNC and EMRS certifications, placing her in a small group of building biologists globally qualified to integrate EMF awareness with moisture control, material health, and healthy design principles into mainstream construction.

Today she works with builders, designers, and industry organizations across Australia and beyond through her Healthy Building Materials Mastermind, her Low EMF Home Design and Construction course, and her consulting and speaking work with some of the most forward-thinking organizations in the built environment.

SHOW YOUR SUPPORT
If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and leave us a rating/review! Thank you for listening ✨

What happens when a commercial construction veteran with a five-hundred-million-dollar mixed-use project on his resume gets taken down by mold? In this episode, Ashley sits down with Dylan Hutcheson, healthy home builder and founder of Holistically Built in Atlanta, Georgia, whose path from high-rise construction management to residential healthy home construction runs straight through two years of mystery illness, medical leave, a disability insurance lawsuit, and a slow, humbling rebuild of his health and his career. Dylan brings something rare to the healthy home conversation: deep mechanical systems knowledge earned not just from building but from years of tearing sick buildings apart and figuring out why they failed.

Together Ashley and Dylan walk through the mechanical systems conversation this space has been waiting for, from why oversizing an HVAC unit is one of the most common and expensive mistakes in hot humid climates, to what ductboard actually is and why one of Atlanta's top ENT doctors will not see patients who still have it in their homes. They dig into manual J, S, D, and T calculations, why a dehumidifier is sometimes a necessary evil and sometimes misunderstood, how ERVs interact with the rest of your system, and why the IQ Air Perfect 16 filter may be one of the most underrated upgrades available for an existing home. They also talk about planning ahead, collision plans for mechanical and structural coordination, roof geometry, window placement, and all the decisions that cost you almost nothing to think about in design and a fortune to fix in the field.

This is a part one, and they are already planning part two around what it actually looks like to build Dylan's own home from scratch. If you are building new, renovating, or just trying to understand why your HVAC system is not doing what you think it is, start here.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• IQ Air Perfect 16 central HVAC filter: iqair.com
• IQ Air standalone air purifiers (note: measure for magnetic fields and keep away from sleeping areas)
• EC3 products by Micro Balance Health Products, Dr. Donald Dennis, Atlanta ENT
• Shielded Healing whole home EMF assessment: https://shieldedhealing.com/page
• Bioflex Laser Clinic, Toronto (photobiomodulation therapy)
• Therasage infrared sauna
• Santa Fe and AprilAire dehumidifiers
• Nikki Krueger episode of The Awakening Spaces Podcast
• Alex Kessler, Healthy Home Guide YouTube channel (air purifier testing episode)

CONNECT WITH ASHLEY
Instagram | Tiktok | Youtube | Website

Ashley helps you renovate and build healthier homes to prevent future health issues from arising from your environment. Whether you’re searching for a new home, assessing concerns with your current one, or embarking on a renovation or new build, Awakening Spaces can guide you every step of the way.

Ashley brings her background in Building Biology and Building Science and years of hands-on experience helping families build and renovate homes to prevent mold, chemical exposure, and EMFs in their living spaces. If you’re looking to build or renovate a new home, Ashley has courses to empower and one on one offerings to guide you through the whole process so you can avoid costly mistakes and enjoy the process again!

Curious about how we can help with your project? Explore our offerings here.

CONNECT WITH GUEST
Instagram | Website

Dylan Hutcheson is a licensed general contractor and founder of Holistically Built, LLC in Atlanta, Georgia. After a career in large-scale commercial construction with Brasfield and Gorrie, Dylan was sidelined by a serious environmental illness that took years to recover from. That experience led him to environmental consulting, where he spent years conducting indoor air quality investigations and helping homeowners navigate remediation before concluding that the best solution was simply building healthier homes from the start.

Today Dylan combines his construction background, environmental consulting experience, and certification as a Building Biology New Build Consultant through the Building Biology Institute to build homes designed to support the health of the people living inside them.

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If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and leave us a rating/review! Thank you for listening ✨

What does it actually mean to build a pretty good house, and why is that sometimes a better goal than building a perfect one? In this episode, Ashley sits down with Emily Mottram, licensed architect, building science educator, co-author of the Pretty Good House book, and one of the most thoughtful voices in the residential design space. Emily grew up on a dairy farm in Pennsylvania, got into architecture because her drafting teacher told her it was hard, and has spent the last two decades chasing every building science certification she could find, not because she thinks she knows everything, but precisely because she knows she does not.

Together they cover an enormous amount of ground: what makes a house healthy when the answer is different for every person and every climate, why spray foam keeps showing up as a band-aid for design problems, what paint is actually doing to your walls and to the ocean, and why the building code is a recipe book that people keep making worse by swapping the wrong ingredients. Emily also shares the story of two back-to-back clients, one with multiple chemical sensitivities and one with a serious mold history, whose needs were almost perfectly opposite, and what that taught her about materials, assumptions, and listening.

This is also a conversation about slowness, about pausing before adding more, doing better things instead of doing things better, and why the most important question to ask before reaching for any building product is whether you actually need it at all. If you are designing, building, or renovating and want to think more clearly about what you are putting into your home and why, this episode is required listening.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• BS and Beer Spray Foam Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGjnZmiviyk
• BS and Beer Spray foam Part 2 Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP0b2Ibe7WU
• Pretty Good House Book
• Get in touch or work with Emily: https://www.mottramandmaines.com/

CONNECT WITH ASHLEY
Instagram | Tiktok | Youtube | Websit

Ashley helps you renovate and build healthier homes to prevent future health issues from arising from your environment. Whether you’re searching for a new home, assessing concerns with your current one, or embarking on a renovation or new build, Awakening Spaces can guide you every step of the way.

Ashley brings her background in Building Biology and Building Science and years of hands-on experience helping families build and renovate homes to prevent mold, chemical exposure, and EMFs in their living spaces. If you’re looking to build or renovate a new home, Ashley has courses to empower and one on one offerings to guide you through the whole process so you can avoid costly mistakes and enjoy the process again!

Curious about how we can help with your project? Explore our offerings here.

CONNECT WITH GUEST
Instagram | Website

Emily Mottram is an architect and principal of Mottram & Maines. She developed an interest in building science and sustainable design in college, where she was inspired to design healthy, durable and energy efficient homes that are also comfortable and beautiful. She is a building science educator, co-Author of “Pretty Good House” a host on “The BS & Beer Show” and the creator of a monthly podcast “E3 - Energy and Efficiency with Emily,” focusing on building science, architecture and female entrepreneurship.

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If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and leave us a rating/review! Thank you for listening ✨

What happens when the person who builds healthy homes for a living becomes the one who desperately needs one? In this episode, Ashley sits down with Brent Little, a thirty-year construction veteran and founder of Pinehaven Healthy Homes in McCall, Idaho, for one of the most honest and human conversations this podcast has ever had. Brent was a high-capacity, driven builder who had been exposed to mold on job sites for decades without incident, until a brand new RV became the straw that broke the camel's back, and both he and his wife found themselves navigating one of the most isolating and misunderstood illnesses of our time.

Brent walks through the full arc of what happened, from the early neurological symptoms he thought might be brain cancer, to the emotional dysregulation that had them considering psychiatric intervention for his wife, to the long and expensive road through functional medicine that led nowhere until he found Dr. Eric Dorninger and Lauren Lowenstein of the Biotoxin Lady community. He also talks candidly about what it is like to be a man going through chronic illness in an industry built on toughness, how CIRS has shifted his entire business model toward natural and low-toxicity materials, and why he now sees this experience as something that was given to him rather than something that happened to him.

This episode is for anyone who has ever felt like they were doing everything right and still got knocked flat. It is also for every builder, tradesperson, and contractor who has never connected the dots between the materials they work with every day and the way their body feels. Brent's story is a reminder that the healthy home conversation belongs to everyone, not just the people building from scratch.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• CIRS cluster symptoms and VCS test
• HLA haplotype testing
• Lauren Lowenstein, The Biotoxin Lady and her private CIRS community: thebiotoxinlady.com
• Cholestyramine and Welchol binder protocol
• Silicosis and respiratory health risks in the trades

CONNECT WITH ASHLEY
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Ashley helps you renovate and build healthier homes to prevent future health issues from arising from your environment. Whether you’re searching for a new home, assessing concerns with your current one, or embarking on a renovation or new build, Awakening Spaces can guide you every step of the way.

Ashley brings her background in Building Biology and Building Science and years of hands-on experience helping families build and renovate homes to prevent mold, chemical exposure, and EMFs in their living spaces. If you’re looking to build or renovate a new home, Ashley has courses to empower and one on one offerings to guide you through the whole process so you can avoid costly mistakes and enjoy the process again!

Curious about how we can help with your project? Explore our offerings here.

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Brent Little is a custom home builder based in McCall, Idaho and the founder of Pine Haven Healthy Homes. He has been in the trades since he was 18, studied Construction Management at Ohio State University, and has spent his career building in one of the most demanding environments in the country, a mountain ski town with high snow loads and complex site conditions that require serious technical skill to navigate.

Two years ago, everything changed. Brent was hit with environmental illness that put him out of commission for over a year. The experience cracked open a whole new understanding of how the homes we build directly affect the health of the people living inside them, and it redirected his passion and his practice toward healthy building.

Today Brent brings that hard-won personal experience together with decades of technical expertise to build homes that are as healthy as they are beautiful. Outside of work, he loves the outdoors, was a sponsored backcountry snowmobiler, and is in the process of adopting his eight-year-old son alongside his wife.

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