Couple Builds Clever $20k Shipping Container Home with NO Experience

[Music] i'm matt and i'm peyton and this is our 45 foot shipping container home located in washington state [Music] we moved in in april of 2020 we got the container here on site in august of last year 2019 so a little less than a year of build time me and payton spent numerous hours down here after work because we both have jobs so juggling work and building the container a little bit under a year [Music] so previous to our shipping container purchase we had a schoolie and we sold that and used that to buy the container and after it was all said and done it cost about twenty thousand dollars including furniture and all of the good things in there we used a lot of second hand stores reclaimed wood from family and things like that too so that helped us save quite a bit this is a five acre chunk on the panderer river it's a thousand feet of river frontage and the thing most people notice about our property right away is the view the view is my favorite part of this property you'll see we placed the container in a strategic location at a strategic angle so that we could see both sides of the river so we can see upstream and downstream we also built the deck to be the same square footage as the container so that we can really appreciate the view when we have friends over [Music] so i'd like to invite you inside to come see our container home [Music] so welcome inside our tiny house and this is our tiny kitchen these cabinets are second hand reclaimed cabinets we we scored really lucky on these they all come with soft shut hinges which is really nice feature that we really that was on the checklist of things we wanted with our cabinets i like that we had the idea to use this cheap metal as a backsplash rather than buying tile it went up super fast it's really easy to wipe down one of my favorite things about the kitchen that we use that i think would be beneficial for others to know about is this induction cooktop right here we pull it out we put it on the counter and we're able to get two pans on there or a pot in a pan um one of each whatever and this is what we use to cook um it has worked awesome and saved us a ton of counter space being able to put that away and then using this if we need to cut things up things like that yeah then going off of that the microwave that i installed has an extractor fan so it takes the cooking air and puts it outside and i think that's crucial if you're planning on living in a tiny space is to get that food air out otherwise your clothes your sheets everything's gonna smell like bacon and grease and then going off the counter space like she was saying um this sink we picked up with a sliding cutting board and then this little dish rack little things that add uh add value to the small space you know everything has to have a purpose or it just doesn't belong yeah that's that's one thing i would say yeah this cutting board we use this every day super easy can come come out so you can take it to the garbage to the sink uh whatever works um and then uh i think too i just i was just realizing is we put under cabinet lighting in um so i don't know if you can see the hue off the metal but at nighttime in here we leave that on it just adds a nice cozy cozy feature to the space another thing you'll notice is we went with a full-size fridge so this was not my decision this was a math decision i wanted something a little bit more compact a little bit smaller um looking back at it now i'm happy with the decision to go full size uh especially living where we live we need to get more than a week's worth of food we're buying in bulk mostly yeah to buy in bulk and be able to store that here has been a necessity for us especially the freezer like the big chest freezer we can get meat and freeze it for a long time and that limits our trips to town and stuff because there's a grocery store up here but it's um it's pretty limited on what you can buy there so it's nice to stock up for a month and then not have to go back into town the walls we used three quarter inch tongue and groove and then this l trim it's all pine so it smelled really good when we put it into and then for the ceiling let's start at the trim actually that's a reclaimed wood from a building that got tore down and i sourced that locally as well like i did for the foundation like a lot of things in here i try if i could find it locally and cheaply i would and i think that's how we stayed right around that twenty thousand dollar mark versus like those forty thousand dollar tiny houses you see yeah i think the tongue and groove um maybe added some time to our build um just because it's a lot of work to put it all together get two ladders have one person down here one person on their nail gun all of that um but it was just important to us to kind of have that homey feel that cabin feel while still being able to stay modern i think was important to us so i i would do it again but definitely a lot slower than hanging sheetrock definitely a lot slower [Music] if you've been following anything to do with tiny houses you've probably seen this stove it's very common in small spaces it's a really great company i would really recommend going with the cubic meter stove we've burned in it twice so far and it puts off a ton of heat for how small it is so i would highly recommend it it does it was kind of fun we just cut wood the other day you have to cut like little pieces but it doesn't take that much so um it wasn't too tedious to cut but um it burns for a long time it does yeah um over here you'll see our island i use this to work from home um so as a teacher it's kind of my office space and then you will notice this tin that we have on the side here i didn't want to do sheetrock it sounded boring to me and i didn't feel like trying to paint it we already had the flooring in i didn't want to deal with taping things off and all of that so i went with this company american tin ceilings so this is actually meant for a ceiling but we used it here it went on easy they fit together kind of like puzzle pieces and they had some nice trim already made so i think it's a nice accent kind of a little pop in our house and i would do it again yeah i really think like when you first walk in here this is the first thing that people look at it really catches your eye and it ties in all the other like stainless steel um deals in the house like the fridge the stove um so it turned out really nice that was all peyton's idea i was i didn't realize the vision she had at first and i was really really proud of the way it turned out so yeah and then our countertops i would say we saved money here as well um we wanted kind of like a marble granite look but didn't want to pay for it and so we just went um home depot you know found a giant slab we had to cut some to size and all of that um but i definitely definitely think it saved us money just going with you know the home depot made ones so yeah it's a particle board laminate countertop so it's not solid it's kind of i don't know what you call it but there's a sheet of laminate on top and it has a like a granite um graphic on it yeah it looks really nice i'm i'm really pleased with the way it turned out and it was super easy to cut so it's holding up well yeah and then underneath our island we have our washer and dryer so we went with like the smaller more compact washer and dryer we debated on them versus the combo washer dryer we ended up going with these we just felt like kind of after assessing the situation they were going to work better i didn't want to downsize my washer load to half to put it in the dryer they've worked great so great for just two people living here i only do laundry about once a week um it's worked great we do you know about an hour on the wash hour on the dry um pretty easy yeah and then we added these bar stools um next to them we use it as our eating area as well kind of a way to get a kitchen table in a tiny home without actually having to put a kitchen table in a tiny home that's then touching on that it's like finding multiple uses for one thing in the same space um so like we fold clothes there we eat there and it houses the washer and dryer and you work from there that's your office so it's like this multi-functional area yeah so that's important definitely yeah and then moving to um our couch here we got this couch from ikea we love it um not only is it our couch but it doubles as the guest bed so you'll notice this pulls out which we also use every night when we watch movies that's a footrest and then it pops up here um like this and so it's a guest bed it can fit two people comfortably i guess you could get more if you're willing and then we have a storage for like sheets and blankets and comforters for this guest bed we just store them in there in that giant storage compartment we also decided to go with the wall mount for the tv obviously and then the floating mantle obviously same thing now instead of having a big entertainment center here we kind of wanted everything up on the wall out of the way and this has worked out great this post was a cut off from our post from the lean to so it goes back to like using the scraps that you have throughout the project in other places has worked out well and then another place we did that was around our sliding barn door this is the same trim we got around the ceiling from that building that got tore down so we used that to mount the rail system for the for the barn door um and that's worked out really great this is our bathroom um it's actually a pretty good size for the tiny house we're living in um we this is the same cabinets we have in the kitchen we also got one for here for our vanity this is our hamper that we kind of use in this space and it works out good we can keep our dirty clothes out of sight out of mind before we do laundry for the week our shower we custom built these are mdf panels that have a flood coat of epoxy and then waterproofing red guard on the back we have a tile niche our niche i guess i still don't know how to say that word and then uh we just trimmed it out with that um the stuff you see in like hotels that white trim because it looks looks all right um in this shower we built it for under 50 bucks so that was a huge seller for us rather than buying like a two 300 insert that was a no-brainer for us to just go ahead and build it ourselves we have floating shelves above the toilet the toilet we went with is a 0.8 gallons per flush since we're trying to conserve water especially right now since we don't have our well hooked up yeah we're always looking to gain more storage here so this corner shelf was pretty important to me to find a way to gain some more drawer storage especially you know being a girl i've got some extra products here but yeah toilet paper you know medicine things like that all go in here and then we each get a drawer over here yeah i wanted to but he wouldn't let me nope and then we have an electrical utility kind of closet right here so this is where our electrical panel is and the miscellaneous things that you don't want people to see when they come in your house you know brooms the dyson vacuum mops laundry detergent things like that and i would highly recommend adding kind of like an electrical closet place to hide your things it's coming very handy for us i would say and then for this space we also have the heater it's a cadet wall heater that's been really great especially the climate we live in when it's cold to get out of the shower that thing really heats up the space and where we hang our towels i've also like hung my like snow pants up to kind of like thaw them off warm my clothes up the gloves it's kind of like a dry room too a little bit yeah i would say and so we spray foamed um the container walls um and i would say throughout the day it's it's cold here where we live um and i just run this for now um so we're in fall um and this pretty much does the job yeah if uh if you're gonna insulate a tiny house i would definitely recommend spray foam it's uh it's done really great and then also in the summertime too keeping this metal cool um when the sun hits this thing it wants to just heat up the spray foam has really been a nice barrier between that and we actually also put um fiberglass insulation over top of that so this thing is very well insulated and that was a big big ticket item for us like when we were going down down to the list of things we needed in this space so and on the other side of the house we have the bedroom we have his and hers closets they're from ikea they took us probably 20 minutes to build each yeah i think for me finding a wardrobe was hard um i wanted to utilize the high cube container um and not a lot of wardrobes are this tall and so honestly the only place i could find one that was this tall was ikea and i'm very happy with the way they turned out we were able to kind of customize how we wanted them so you know drawers that pull out were important for us shoe racks so doubles saving space again is important and then also having somewhere to hang your clothes was important that's a good thing you touched on like the high cube the um you could really take advantage of the high ceiling room that you have in one of these and i don't know for utilizing it the best but the wardrobe is definitely they definitely did yeah but there's other places like we could have put cabinets up on the walls higher for more storage we still might yeah i guess it's it's uh ever-changing so we might put some up on the walls um this is our bed it's a size um bed it's a purple mattress actually that's something i'm really proud of finally splurged and bought the purple it's a great bed what 10 out of 10 recommend and the view we have from our bedroom was another key reason why we put the container where we did and how we angled it like peyton was saying yeah we wanted to be able to open those doors up and then see down the river um so we wake up to that every morning and it's been great yeah and the stars at night are amazing from this window as well there's no light pollution here or anything so we get kind of the best of both worlds with the the morning river view and the night stars [Music] this is our air conditioning for the tiny house it's a new air like a portable ac yeah it's a portable ac unit um and it does really great it kicks ass in the space i think it's rated for up to like 500 square feet so we're at 360. so it's more more than can handle cooling down and heating the space originally we were going to go with the lg split so that has an external unit that has to sit on the outside of the house so we would have to have built a pad for that versus this just has like kind of an extraction hose it was super easy to install and yeah i love it it works out great yeah that's a remote you can set like like your sleep time on it so it can turn off at certain times it's like really custom customizable for you so yeah definitely going back to again the insulation i think because we insulated so well this unit just the single unit does what we need it to do we went with a slider in the bedroom mostly for the view but also so that we can access underneath the bed you'll notice that we kind of built the bed up just a little bit higher than a normal bed would sit um and again when you're living tiny you need storage so we definitely have utilized underneath the bed whether it be you know winter jackets extra food paper towels things like that that all sits underneath and we're able to access that from outside which is awesome another cool thing we did was we recessed the slider into the container and then were able to keep the original container doors on the container so let's go check it out [Music] so one thing you might notice about the outside of our container is that we left the original doors on here and we did that for security purposes when we leave for long periods of time we like to be able to close and lock the doors also nice if it's really cold out to be able to keep the container very well insulated so we made the decision to leave the original doors on and touching on the fact of it getting really cold up here we usually experience a lot of snow in this area so the pitch of the roof we decided to go with a 3x12 and it spans from the top of the container all the way over to the lean 2 where we park vehicles and tools but that what that does for us is it gives a place for the snow to shut off away from our deck away from the living space and we can still enjoy this outdoor view this is our utility shed it houses our big water tank because we don't have a well on the property yet and this is the propane tank that we use for our hot water heater it is a tankless hot water heater i can't say enough good things about it we haven't had any issues so far we really enjoy that in here there's a 1 500 gallon water tank and we use a 200 gallon water tank to transport the water so we go to a water source fill up and then bring it back here and use kind of a hosing creation that we have made and it fills it in about six trips so it doesn't really take that much effort and surprisingly it's lasted us about three months before we have to refill when we were developing this property this all used to be treat in so it took a lot of nights with payton running the backhoe and me running a chainsaw to cut down and skid all the trees out of here when we built the road i put a ditch in the road and i put the power out here but i also put a water line in the ditch or as of right now we're not using that water line when we get the well we'll hook that water line up and we'll have this be fully running off the well we won't have to do any more trips with our truck as the first time homeowners and first-time property owners um it's been insane just like the maintenance that it takes to own property like for example we've had trees come down across the road and nobody's you know it's like you're in a neighborhood development where your neighbors are going to help you out it's you have to fire up the chainsaw and cut your way out we've had like parts of our road kind of flood with water and then this like in the winter where we live it's just snow and removal constantly so that's the challenging aspect it's just not like you know where if you live in the city your streets get plowed out you know it's like up to you to take care of all that so you can get in and out yeah and i think living together for our first time naturally we kind of just filled the rolls um some stereotypical roles and such you know where i do most of the house cleaning and he does most of the outdoor work but we try to do a lot of it together so if we need to go cut wood we'll go together we need to spend a day cleaning you know we'll split it up so it's been a pretty natural find of roles for us i feel like and we've done a pretty good job balancing that and if you're looking for a backhoe operator peyton is the best equipment operator this side of the mountain thanks this is the lean 2 i was talking about earlier this is the 3 by 12 pitch so it essentially adds 10 more feet of storage space for us to keep important things dry in the winter time this is a good spot to push snow and remove snow from the property it's also created an area for us to keep things dry so important things to us whether that be you know motorcycles fun toys things like that and then especially our beautiful van again right here that has become our adventure rig we like to go to hot springs in the winter and just travel around with it and this is a better shot of the ecology blocks i talked about source that i sourced locally from a demoed property so they're two and a half feet off the ground which creates a great crawl space to make plumbing connections and do repairs underneath the container we got our container from seattle you can go to the port yourself and bargain with them but we found it was easier to go through a dealer so this is somebody that buys multiple containers a week and then sells them to customers so we got ours at a pretty good deal you can usually find them brand new or used we decided to go with the used one so it's got dings and dents all over it and usually that means lots of rust because they spend most of their life on ships so when we first got our container it was kind of a red color and lots of rust around so we used a rust converter to paint over the top and then we also use a wire wheel to kind of go and buff out those rust spots and then we followed that up with paint and primer and that was a fun experience so a lot of hours that people don't realize that go into these container rooms is just the prep work initially when it comes on site with rust and dents and dealing with delivery every container comes with a name plate and like i said we got our container used so it was very important to both of us to look up the serial number to see exactly what was shipped inside this container and basically we wanted to avoid any any kind of chemical shipping and things of that nature so this particular container like i said i came out for seattle but it was shipping mainly water and dry [Music] goods we're both we're 24 now i'm 23 and this is this is our first house so i wanted to have my own space and live somewhere without paying rent just into the black abyss that ren is i wanted to invest my money into something and i wanted my my own space so to do that without spending two hundred thousand dollars we were able to build this for under twenty thousand so for both of us being young not having kids this is the perfect space for us yeah i think i personally was kind of hesitant at first i would give him full credit for this idea but after he explained all of those things to me i was fully on board and understood how beneficial it's going to be for our future in saving that money you're saving yeah yeah yeah with my land payment and then we're just paying power um yeah we we're definitely saving at least two three hundred dollars per month on what we'd be paying for rent around here so yeah and it's going towards something that we own and we'll have forever [Music] we had the school bus before this we were a little more mobile but it's nice to like plant your roots somewhere and have a place to go back to when you want to you know you can call home that's definitely really nice this build was super fun for me and peyton we learned a lot throughout the whole build through trial and error most of the time but it brought us closer together and you definitely have a better appreciation for the space you live in when you put so much time and effort into building it i think i personally learned a lot i don't think i could even tell you what tool was what before we started and now i feel like i could confidently use those tools that i didn't know how to name before so it was a good process an experience for me as well you can check out part of the build series on youtube at matt and payton or you can follow our personal lives on instagram at matt and payton as well thanks for coming out and checking out our tiny [Music] home thank you for watching our video and for stopping by tiny house expedition i'm alexis and i'm christian don't forget to like comment and subscribe and for more tiny home tours and stories click the videos below and join us on patreon for bonus content including face-to-face conversations with us we hope to see you there all right thanks guys have a good one

Channel: Tiny House Expedition

Views: 1,137,127

Rating: 4.8952775 out of 5

Keywords: container home, tiny container home, container home conversion, shipping container home, $20k tiny home, $20k container home, tiny home, diy container home, tiny house, shipping container house, container home design, container home ideas, shipping container tiny home, 45ft container home, shipping container home design, container home tour, tiny home tour, 45 ft high cube container conversion, living big in a tiny house, tiny house tour, life uncontained, tiny living

Id: guufciJaug8

Length: 26min 9sec (1569 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 30 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/bluegirl690]

Very cool container house! And the view is absolutely perfect. Have a great time growing into your new place (:

[u/PureGreensLLCAZ]

This is fantastic! You both did a wonderful job with this, making it modern and using the space you have in great ways.

Impressed with the stove and the pull out couch. Enjoy your new home!

[u/Balazi]

Hands down the best view I have ever seen! I never understand how so people can build containers so simply and easily for 20k and other sites/videos/people say it costs about 200k to make something livable?