Although the last few weeks have been extremely busy, it has certainly been the most exciting time of our lives. My husband and I have build numerous homes for clients in the past, and finally we have the opportunity to build our own. A debt-free, off-the-grid house that will be home to ourselves and our children. Now although we have some experience with this kind of build, we still have a lot to learn. Our motto has become: “Trial and error…we learn as we go along.”
The build of a shipping container home should be fairly quick as it is a building block in itself. As a rule, we do not work on holidays and weekends, thus yesterday was our 10th actual day of working on the structure.
In this time we managed to get the house livable. We now have all of the following:
- Running water (pulling from main house until we have a suitable off-grid solution)
- Basic electricity (also pulling from main house until we have found the right solar solution)
- 2 Bedrooms
- A mini-kitchen
- Painted walls and floor
Bedroom walls are up using the cut-out steel from the main walls
Tinted floors and painted walls
Our big purchase this week was an entry -level gas stove
We bought a basic solar lighting system for our outside bathroom
Polystyrene pieces we are buying for insulating the roof
My design philosophy has always been one of recycling and re-purposing. We are negotiating with the owner of these polystyrene pieces above which is currently unused. It was previously used as a refrigerator. We will be using it as insulation for our roof. During the coming week we are hoping to source major items such as insulation, exterior wood cladding among others.
Guys about to paint exterior feature
Keeping in mind our inspiration:
Our inspiration house
We are happy to say we are moving in tomorrow! Whoop-whoop!
