Living in an Ultra-Modern Shipping Container Home - Built with 4 x 20ft Used Containers

hey everyone in this video we're touring a really beautiful and modern shipping container home in kamloops bc the main house has two bedrooms and it's built with four recycled shipping containers and there's an additional studio space that's connected to the main house with a breezeway kathy and her husband trevor downsized to the small space three years ago and they've been living in it full time ever since and they rent out the studio space on airbnb kathy is going to give us a full tour and share their experience so let's go check it out [Music] the idea of giving a shipping container a new life was appealing to us there's so many of these things as we all know and turning it into something beautiful and something that you can live in and hopefully last for a long long time i think that's pretty special what i love about this place is the windows obviously because of the view and i like small space now i love trying to live a life of you know a minimalist at least that's what i'm trying to do but i really have just grown so fond of it and the fact that it's takes me 10 minutes to clean is kind of an added bonus as well so this is our third year here and trevor and i are here full time it's made from four recycled shipping containers they're 20 feet long and it was designed and manufactured by a company called hono mobile in edmonton alberta so this is you know kind of what you see is what you get 704 square feet so even though it's a small space we still have a full-size sofa and obviously two chairs we can fit lots of people in lots of guests can kind of cozy up and you know i don't feel like i'm missing anything in terms of it being all one one big room and having it all white is just like having a blank canvas and really i feel that the scenery is the artwork anyway and then the kitchen is lovely because of the window that it has on the end so it's a full kitchen a quartz countertop the cabinet space is great because we don't have a ton of space it really makes you think about what you're purchasing so i don't you know i try not to go overboard the one thing that this place doesn't have but you could easily put it in is is an oven because we have the outdoor kitchen that's where our oven is now so i don't worry about it too much but it does have a microwave dishwasher small fridge and we have just a normal three-piece bathroom it's got a full tub and shower and a nice window and this is the washer and dryer it's perfect i don't need anything more and this is the master bedroom and you know pocket doors are great for space savers so this is what is affectionately known as my sleeping closet it fits a queen-size bed and at the end of it is all of the cabinet space and it's honestly it's perfect it's really all we need this is a den with another pocket door which is nice i mean it's the same size as the other bedroom so you could have a bed in here but i just have my little desk and it's got wall-to-wall storage and we put in an extra cabinet for coats and stuff by the front door we used to live in sort of a traditional 23 hundred square foot home and then after we raised our sons we really didn't need all that space you know there's just two of us and we just thought well we'll just build our own shipping container house how hard can it be and then when you realize there's a lot of hoops to jump through certainly for us in this area there is so when we found these guys and it was already csa approved it made it way way easier with financing and insuring and stuff like that from the time we ordered it to the time it showed up it was about three months so it's a really fast process the house and the studio is on what's called a raft's lab so it's like 1280 square feet this is the breezeway so it's a space between our container home and the studio and it's so hot here that this is like a lovely space to hang out in in the summer months because it's nice and cool you know this is a black house we live in a semi-desert area it's really hot here it's all windows as you can see on the one side so yeah it gets a ton of exposure one thing that really helped for us is the cooler blinds and so they're exterior and they just crank down and then obviously the curtains and we have a fujitsu system for the air conditioner in the winter is as soon as the sun comes through those windows it just changes it you know we don't have to have the heat on and it's really nice and warm so you've got to you know give a little bit on either end with the seasons [Music] you lower your cost of living because it's just obviously a smaller space less space to heat less space to cool less space to be purchasing stuff and you know cramming it all in so yeah our cost of living went down for sure trevor does contract work i'm a singer and a vocal coach and we're both sort of transitioning into other things and you know we've got this other space across the breezeway that's our studio and that's kind of developed into another project that's you know allowing some more income and this is the studio so this space is about 450 square feet and it's a traditional stick frame so it's not built from shipping containers like like our home but it's kind of made to look like that my husband and my sons built it it was initially a garage and then once we got into it we thought it's such a nice space because of the big glass garage door we decided to turn it into a bedroom then we thought maybe we would turn it into an airbnb and that's where things have just completely taken off and it's been super fun it's not much bigger than a tiny home and we decided to put you know a double sink a full fridge and freezer and then uh toaster oven and microwave and table and sort of turn it into this whole place being one living space for guests and this is the entertainment area it's got a 55 inch tv and a turntable one thing that my mom and i do is try and get a sense of who was coming and what they might like so we'd pick a record according to you know what they might enjoy when they showed up for the bed we have a hide-a-bed because that way it's got a little bit more of a transition in terms of what you're using the space for hide-a-beds are notoriously not that comfortable so we added a memory foam and it's pretty comfy now the view and the garage door it makes a pretty nice space to stay in most people when they show up here that's what they want to do is put the garage door up sit out on the deck have a glass of wine the bugs aren't a problem around here so we have a three-piece bathroom but this has a walk-in shower and my son did all of the tiling and it's got a nice cement tile floor hosting guests here has been such a positive thing in my life getting to meet people from all over the world has been pretty cool you know i've made some friends that i never would have got a chance to meet them in any other setting so that's been such a nice thing and then obviously it just shifted my life into a new career and financially it's been super rewarding airbnb has been such a cool experience that we decided you know now maybe we can start looking at building another tiny home then we are looking into experiences and offering experiences here my son is a master enduro dirt biker and kamloops is a mecca for dirt biking and mountain biking so he wants to offer experiences in both and then we have the outdoor kitchen my other son is this fantastic cook so we like to offer experiences to come and cook and you know break bread together and so we've got some exciting things coming up this video is sponsored by airbnb and we're excited to be collaborating with them we've visited and filmed dozens of airbnb spaces over the years and we've met a lot of hosts like kathy who have benefited from renting spaces on airbnb whether it's meeting new people paying off the mortgage or turning it into a full-time job if you want to find out more about how to become an airbnb host we'll put a link in the description below we're super inspired by kathy's shipping container home and her journey to hosting on airbnb we'll put a link to her listing in the description below if you want to visit the black box container studio in kamloops bc thanks so much for watching and we'll see you in the next video

Channel: Exploring Alternatives

Views: 2,839,624

Rating: 4.9436712 out of 5

Keywords: shipping container, tiny home, modern, micro, 704 square feet, couple, musician, alternative, tour, desert, living, Airbnb, two, bedroom, shipping, container, cabin, rental, Kamloops, BC, Canada, home, house, interior, design, white, Honomobo, Exploring Alternatives, lifestyle, full, time, recycled, used, 20 foot, c can, sea can, prefab, studio, kitchen, room, story, documentary, experience, host, hosting, pros, cons, windows, installation, foundation, architecture, modular, build, building, stick, frame, raft, slab, new, unique, Black, Box

Id: LvUI3-0QkI0

Length: 9min 59sec (599 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 10 2020