We bought five shipping containers with which to build our house. It might seem a bit bizarre to read this, but each shipping container almost seems to have its own personality. So this is a post about each of the individual containers we purchased, and some interesting facts about shipping containers.
Continue reading About Shipping Containers
We’ve very excited about the K-Span steel arch roof that will be covering our container house. But of course, we need something in place to which the steel roof can attach to the containers. Kevin has been busy preparing for the roof installation.
Continue reading Preparing for the K-Span Roof
We have been very grateful to have another car with which to run errands and get to places. The Nissan 1400 that Kevin spent so many hours repairing, has proved to be such a fun little get-a-round vehicle. My favourite part of the project has been the interior, probably because I had a chance to work on this section of the restoration.
Continue reading Nissan 1400 Project is Complete!
Now that the shipping containers are in place, Kevin’s next task had to do with securing the shipping containers to the ground. Kevin has completed a large amount of the welding work. I’m pretty sure our new house won’t budge whether it’s hit by earthquake, hurricane or tornado!
Continue reading Securing Shipping Containers to the Ground
The one day I’ve been most nervous about was the day that we were finally ready to work on the positioning of the shipping containers. Would everything run smoothly on the day we finally placed the containers in their final resting places? Was I right to be nervous? We’ll let you decide …
Continue reading Positioning Shipping Containers
From the start of our container house project, our choice in door and window frames has been a no-brainer. There was no question between any of us as to what type of material we would choose for our frames between wood, steel or aluminium; we are using aluminium. There are so many advantages of using aluminium door and window frames on your projects, over wood or steel. Have a read and let us know what you would choose for your own projects!
Continue reading The Advantages of Aluminium Door and Window Frames
We spent a few days preparing for positioning the shipping containers. We needed to make the yard safe for the trucks and do the final bit of work on the footings so that the containers can be anchored securely to the pins.
Continue reading Preparing for Positioning the Shipping Containers
We have decided to jump in the deep end and build our own house out of shipping containers. But what do you do if you want to live in a shipping container house but don’t wish to do all the work yourself? You need some kind of off-the-shelf container homes solution. My Container Home is a company advertising just such a solution.
Continue reading Off The Shelf Container Homes
Almost exactly one year after we moved onto our plot, we could finally get on with casting the concrete footings. We were very excited! I keep on going outside to admire Louis’ handiwork because this really is a big deal. Our future house will be standing on those very blocks of concrete. All this hard work, that is now behind us, will keep our house straight and secure. Even though they will soon be buried under dirt and the shipping containers, this is what will support the weight of the house above.
Continue reading Casting the Concrete Footings!
Our structural engineer explained to us that the concrete footings could not sit in clay. This is because the heavy house would sink in the clay when it was wet. Therefore, as per our previous post, we had to dig below the level of the clay. Now that this was done, we could start with the preparations for casting concrete for the container footings.
Continue reading Preparations for Casting Concrete
