Home & family, Interiors

How to Use Shipping Containers for Housing

shipping container houseHome design and home improvement are two very broad topics. These two topics are also very popular, which is somewhat logical. Each and every person spends many years daydreaming about that day, when he or she will be able to purchase things for his or her own home. Now, when we daydream, our homes look excellent. We imagine that each and every corner will be designed to represent a particular part of our own persona. We picture our close friends knocking on our door, entering our home and being amazed with all the wonderful things that are around. We think about how all this will make the childhood of our future offspring much more beautiful and cozy. We tend to think about a lot of things, don't we? But, when the time comes to do all this actually, we realize that it is much more difficult than we thought.

In this article I will focus on a peculiar way of housing. As you can see from the title itself, this piece of text is about shipping containers and how to use them for making a beautiful housing unit. Think of it as a way of telling you how home décor can be very, very interesting, fun and rewarding.

  • Why shipping containers?

First of all, you should be aware that each and every container (that is not that much out of date) is designed to be extremely durable, and since people use them to transport all sorts of fragile things overseas, giving the fact that they are able to carry, let's say, priceless vases through a tough sea storm without the vases getting even a scratch… you can conclude that even the interior is constructed to be very safe. What more do you need?

  • Let's get down to business…

In order to create a shipping container home, you will need two shipping containers at the least. Make sure that both of them are completely the same - same measurements, same manufacturer… same everything. These containers have sliding doors on the side. Align the containers just like you would align dominos - place one next to the other so that the end of the first is aligned with the middle part of the second container. Do you have an image in your head? If you do, you will be able to understand that, when the doors are open you have one big room and two small rooms. The whole construction looks something like this actually:

Of course, the walls that surround the red and green room have to be added. A very beautiful thing is that the yellow room can be turned into two separate rooms just by, well, closing the container door. What is most excellent about this "invention" is that you can continue adding containers both sideways and upwards. I have seen entire buildings built using containers and some compound to conjoin them. That's it.

  • Is this for your "primary" house?

Well, a lot of people wouldn't be satisfied with having a container home as their primary place of living. Such a construction can be excellent if you want to, let's say, add an extra room to your house. People did this and it proved to be very well-functioning. People just tore down a wall of their home and added a container. Nevertheless, the best usage for a port container house is, in my opinion, a summer home. Somewhere near the sea, you buy a small piece of land, transport your container there, and enjoy. It'll me more than enough.

wrapped shipping container

  • Something to wrap it all up…

Finally, I have to say that I am thrilled and amazed by the fact that people are constantly inventing new ways of doing some very important things in life. It takes courage to try something new and out of the ordinary and I will always applaud this. Make sure that you don't stop with your internet research here, since there are loads of interesting ideas and pieces of text on the topic of using shipping containers (new and used) for housing scattered all over the place. You just have to look for them. In the end, I am sure that you will find what you are looking for, do it, and start living.

If you have any questions, please ask below!