Couple Build Amazing Shipping Container Home For Debt-Free Living

so many of us have a dream of living debt and mortgage free but in order to make that a reality it sometimes requires some really out-of-the-box thinking and that is exactly what this next couple have done by building an incredible home out of shipping containers [Music] hi Jamie how's it going good lovely to meet you this container home is just so cool what was it that inspired you to build a shipping container home we want any mortgage free and Dave has always been in metalwork and so we thought how hard is it to stick a couple containers together it's like Legos right right and you did this whole project as a DIY build didn't you yes the plumbing the electrical all the substructure welding there's so many things it's completely permitted so we went through all the steps with our County to get it have an occupancy permit at the end of it that was our goal is to do it completely on the grid and was the county on board with that completely they totally helped us out we were like the first ones to do this crazy new kind of home in their County and they were like God I think it happen yeah so they made it happen for us like in record time you mentioned before that a big part of doing this project was the desire to be mortgage free can you tell me where you were before starting this home daily grind okay you're stuck in that rut with everybody else you know I like I know we can do something different I think we can make this happen what do you think let's go down this path let's just try it out yeah we were living in a condo in Kalama after we remodeled the house in Vancouver so it gave us a little nest egg to start our project we're able to purchase the land and we had a nest egg about $50,000 to start our build but we didn't realize as to turn on the water as $10,000 to turn on the electricity is nine thousand dollars to put in a septic is twelve thousand dollars and to purchase our containers and we were almost out of money before we started but you can't get a conventional loan on these kind of bills and so we just went to work every day and we worked on this project Friday Saturday and Sunday every day for ten months and we just worked hard and it's paid off yeah we've been blessed we made it up here mortgage free have enough money you all will congratulations on that because this really is such a tremendous accomplishment thank you now before we talk too much about the Container I also want to talk about your property this is just beautiful there's a lot of work a friend told us when we first purchased the property and he drove in and he stood at the top of it he said someday this is gonna be your own private Garden of Eden and it really has involved that way we love it you don't have to go anywhere when this is your home and you can walk out your front door and boom yeah and then the container house what size is this there's a 40-foot on the bottom and a 20-foot on the top so it's 406 finished square feet but it fits everything that we need and I really like the design and what you've done here by stacking them one on top of the other and creating this incredible deck on the top outdoor living space is so important when you're living tiny it really has made it more sustainable for us like Dave likes to tease sometimes you have to go outside just to change your mind and so there are times when that is the truth so it is nice that's one reason you know we've had this passion to grow out the property and landscape it so that it was an enjoyable place not only in the house but outside the house too and so what was the process of building this home to get a like we did it overcoming a lot of obstacles and challenges we got our containers delivered we cut out all the windows we got him craned in onto our foundation and we were in the process of building finishing on our structural wellbeing our railing and about midway through that process Dave had a major brain bleed it was called an intracranial hemorrhage it was spontaneous there was no known underlying effect Dave called me and said something is wrong I can't feel my arm and so I instantly came driving home and when I got here he was about halfway up the driveway and as soon as I pulled up I could tell by the way his face was that he'd had a stroke or a seizure or something and I walk up to him and he I'm gonna cry he falls he falls into my arms and he said I was waiting for you before I went to sleep and the doctor said if he'd gone to sleep we wouldn't have this recovery because his brain would have shut down and the way his bleed was he wouldn't have survived it and we had our fifth wheel here at the time it would have been very easy to just like lay down for a little bit you know I'll be fine but it's funny he's laying in the hospital bed right before they life flighted him for surgery and he whispered barely but he whispered I don't have time for this we're building a house run and I just got done it's gonna be okay it's gonna be okay and so the prognosis was very very poor the kind of bleed he'd had and where it was that in his brain it was so poor that they didn't even want to do surgery because it was so deep they were afraid of the more damage that they would do so it was a watch and wait kind of thing I did not leave his room or his side for five days I mean I took care of him I slept in the ICU bed with him this was my best friend this was not the way that our story was supposed to go by the end of the first week Kevin I'm home I had him into five different therapy appointments and we worked around the clock for three months to reestablish his speech his feeling cool his therapist actually used our deck and the stairs as part of his therapy to learn the cognitive problem-solving in part again the dexterity with his fingers the feeling and sensation with the screws and the drill so it was scary for me to watch him using power tools weekly it's almost therapeutic it was and it gave him a purpose and a reason to get out of bed everyday and a reason to get up off the couch and so right and it slowed us down but still managed to finish it off and we did months we did we finished the project still in ten minutes and stronger and more appreciative of every single minute and it helped us to understand it you have to find joy in the small things joy is not ever-present you choose to be joyful in the midst of the turmoil that really is such an incredible story I'm so happy to see that you've recovered so well and that I can really understand that that must have been horrendous ly scary for you what I love about that story is that this house got to be part of your recovery story as well yeah especially right after that stroke now that helped me regain all those nerves inside it tells me you know the connections that your brain makes your body you know yes so I helped tremendously congratulations that is a tremendous accomplishment thank you well you've done such a great job with this home I really loved the unique look of it from the exterior and I'm very excited to see what you've done inside can we take a look let's take a look mom welcome to our home thank you very much this is absolutely beautiful I love the style of your home thank you it's really just our own style a little bit of everything that makes up who we are pictures of our kids and Dave likes to get me succulents as a little gift and so I love them they're small they work in our space my grandmother loved owls and that's something I've held onto for forever and so it's just us the floor is definitely a feature I really like this thank you this was a rough one for me we bought the floor thinking that it would contrast really well with our Hickory cabinets and when we initially put it in there was nothing else in the space and I actually literally cried about she's like this is the ugliest forever disappointed but it has grown on me and so I love it and we live in the woods and we live with rock and it really has held up for yeah and tell me about the design of your lounge I know that a lot of tiny homes have built-ins which are awesome for the storage but I really wanted a more contemporary look in our home and so we went to a lot of furniture stores with the tape measure looking for one that would fit our tiny space and make all the tolerances between you know in the door into the kitchen and so we found it we love it it's a nice place to curl up in the fall in the winter with our fireplace and enjoy some time together and then your kitchen is really lovely it's actually very big for a small house isn't it it is I personally don't like to do a lot of cooking but I wanted to be able to have the space and so this is our dining room area and we actually can feed and seat six people in here it's cozy but we can have all the kids over for dinner and it is a long galley size kitchen but we have full-size appliances all the way through and a dishwasher we really don't lack for anything that we didn't have in our typical size house and then these granite countertops they're a definite touch of luxury aren't they they are we did learn through the process that when you do things on a smaller scale you can go with higher-end finishes because you only have to buy them in a small quantity and so we did you know very nice cabinets countertops and stainless steel appliances and then that's your bathroom through there is it it is can we have a look at that absolutely so when we were taking inventory of the things that were important to us we knew that a big bathroom where we had room to being here together to turn around to get dressed to have some clothes storage was really important to us went with the pedestal sink so it wasn't wall to wall to wall cabinetry yeah and the shower actually Dave built that and it was also part of his recovery from his stroke on the tower it was a long slow process but he did a good job and then these are kitchen cabinets that we just stacked on top of each other and this is Dave's closet and yeah we have tons of storage in here so everything's working just like a home and then what's through the back door here so into the closet here for code we had to have a closet for our single bedroom and so this is closet on our blueprint now it really is a closet so nice we have our pantry I've been doing a lot of canning but also my space prior to that you know this closet Pryor's just a little bit this was where our son lived our youngest when we first moved in so he'd room for a twin size bed a dresser a TV but since now he's a full-size man then we've moved him up into the shop but this was plenty of room for him so you know it was like a two bedroom house and it worked good but now it's nice to have the extra space you can kind of declutter the rest of the areas because it can all be organized in here and then can we take a look at the upstairs absolutely all right now this spiral staircase that is quite a feature isn't it it is it's pretty steep but it tucks back into this space so perfectly you know we had some storage underneath of it we weren't expecting it was yeah and next our cool thing well let's check out the next container on top this is really cool being high up as well you have such a beautiful perspective of the forest from this room don't you we do we actually put the bird feeders right out the window here so you can see the birds in the morning yeah we definitely do feel like we are tucked in the woods right here so again when we were taking inventory other things that were important to us a bedroom that we could stand up in that we could somewhat walk around in that's really important to us and this is a queen-size bed up here queen-size bed we did have some challenges we couldn't find nightstands so Dave built these for me but we have a seasonal Creek right outside our bedroom window and so in the fall and the winter in the spring we get to lay there and listen to the creeks and yeah we love it up here and you've got a lovely area over here with the sait and of course there's the TV up here yes so I wanted a little space where I could read where I could write a bit and actually I don't use it that often because we spend so much time outside and doing other things but it is nice to have the option here the only time we watch TV is when we're laying in bed but it's nice to be able to just zone out and do things like normal people in big houses do sometimes and so we do enjoy that you know creature comforts even though we're living tiny yeah and then through here we've got the deck can we take a look at that yes so when we were building our container and we wanted to put the 20-footer on top of our 40-footer we didn't want to lose any of our available living space so we built a deck out here off our master bedroom and it is just a little piece of heaven out here sitting up here having morning coffee having dinner in the evenings we just love looking over our valley the view from up here is absolutely majestic yes it is we feel very blessed how long have you been living in the home now just about three and a half years yeah and how are you finding the space has actually worked out for you I think it's been a learning process right from the beginning to where we're at right now and I think it's been something that we would probably not change and it wasn't what we were expecting our vision was to just get up here mortgage free building tiny seemed like the way to do that and I think it's exceeded our expectations on a lot of levels it's introduced us to a healthier lifestyle a simpler lifestyle you know a lifestyle where we can have time and energy and resources to do other things that are really important to us and so yeah I wouldn't go back and change anything either we're off the treadmill we don't need more stuff we got rid of all of our stuff to make this happen and so obviously a huge part of the reasoning behind why you did this Pro it was to stay mortgage and debt-free so what was the final budget for this project I'd say total we have probably about 80 yeah about 175 a square foot us doing it all by ourselves I think 80,000 for a home like this is a pretty remarkable result and obviously that is testament to you doing all of the work yourself so congratulations on that thank you thanks and now that the home is complete what's next for you both there's a couple things that I know I want to do and it's kind of like I'm trying to convince through their town go on what is it I really like to build a suspension bridge from that deck to this deck and the reason why is because I've built that deck over there and have a counterbalance so I can hook onto that thing and be able to have that bridge accessed over here and then ideally you'd like to build like a landing and zipline down to the bottom of the property and it's just a big kids are it's doable look at it I can see how cuz I've done a couple zip lines already and I know it could be done really easy well now that the work in the home is done I guess this is time just to do the playful stuff right right yes absolutely we've done the hard work let's play a little bit I think what this has taught us about ourselves is that we can do things that are really really hard that if we do them together we can definitely accomplish it yeah separate it's really hard when he got so sick and I didn't know there was no way I could finish this but you know it's one reason we worked so hard together for him to get back to a healthy state because we had goals and so we know that life throws you curveballs but just go with it find the joy in the moment you know adventure awaits around every corner choose joy live outside the box color outside the lines definitely be positive be positive be a little sassy positive be different it's okay to be different and we are different we live initiative yes yeah and not too many people can say that yeah but we have made the shipping container our home well this home really is just incredible I love the style I love the uniqueness of it and I think you have both created a really special place here thank you so much for sharing it with me yeah thank you thank you Jamie and Dave had to move through some incredible challenges in order to make this build a reality but they did and the result is a home which is beautiful artistic unique and which has really brought them both so much closer together they set out with a goal to become mortgage free and here they've accomplished that and so much more [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Living Big In A Tiny House

Views: 15,128,757

Rating: 4.9026494 out of 5

Keywords: living big in a tiny house, tiny house, tiny home, tiny house tour, shipping container, container home, shipping container house, container house life, container house tour, shipping container tour, 20ft shipping container, 40ft shipping container, diy shipping container house, container house building, small house, small home, small spaces, small space living, debt free living, mortgage free home, debt free container home, tiny house 2019

Id: EZURIKHf6Es

Length: 16min 53sec (1013 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 13 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/SWMobileStorage]

Great video and walkthrough!