Rough Layout

This is the main living section of the house. It will have the kitchen, pantry, and master bedroom/bathroom. In front of this section will be a great room with the family and dinning room.

These pictures are taken from the family room looking into the kitchen.

The rectangle on the left will be the pantry.

This back section will be our master bathroom. The lines on the
left show where our closets will be with the toilet in between.

This is the second section that will contain the laundry room, bathroom, guest bedroom, and living room/office area.

Tearing Down the Walls

The whole world is suffering with the effects of COVID 19 but because they have done away with elective surgeries at the hospital, Aaron hasn't been working much the last few weeks. He had lots of vacation time saved up so this gave him extra time to work on the house. We have really been blessed.

 Since we put two boxes together, we needed to take out the walls between them. Aaron used a plasma torch, disk grinder, and a sawzall to do it. He came home every night covered in metal shavings and got a few burns on his arms from the sparks that would fly as he cut. Once he was done taking out the walls, he had to grind down about 1/2 inch of residual wall so that we can lay tile or carpet on the floors.

Insulation Prep

We are in the process of attaching framing to the walls. This was done so that we would have a way of attaching the insulation to the walls. We did this on the outside walls only because we will be taking out the metal pieces between each box to open up the space.








Peek-a-boo, I see you!! Aaron was on the outside getting ready to attach the framing. I was looking through the corner where the two sections meet.

Moving Day!!

It’s moving day... three of the four shipping containers are now on their foundation with the last one to follow tomorrow. This is truly an answer to prayers. A friend called Aaron today and said his grandson needed to do some work to earn money so they would move the boxes for us. We are so blessed.

This is a trench for plumbing.

This slab with the tractor on it will be framed for our living room.

This will be our courtyard/patio. Eventually there will be another
section on the left side of this picture so it will be in a U shape.

Foundation

Exciting day!! Last piece of foundation poured before we start building. Next step is figuring out how to get the shipping containers into place. This is the foundation for the living room. It is the only part of the house that we are not using shipping containers for. We had lots of help from family and friends.

Foundation Preparation

The plans for our house have been submitted and we are waiting for approval so we can get our building permit. In the meantime, Aaron has started clearing the land for the foundation. We have been very lucky and blessed to have help from some friends in the process.

Update

It's been a year since we began our adventure and slowly but surely it is coming together. Aaron has been working on the plans and patiently addresses each change we decide to make. Aaron only has one day a week to work on the plans and often that day is used for other things that need to be done. Hopefully the plans will be finished soon and we can finally get started building.

The layout of our house has changed a little bit since our initial plans. The house will now be in a U-shape with a 40x40 courtyard in the middle. I have dreams of a humming bird/butterfly garden for that area as well as a nice outdoor living space. We also decided to add a living room that will be not be part of the shipping containers. This will give us more space for our kitchen and dining room. It will also allow us to have a big front porch that faces Mount Graham. I plan on spending lots of time watching the sun set from the porch.

Aaron got a 3,000 gallon water tank and hooked up the pump for the well. The pump runs on solar power and works great.

View of the mountain from our front porch

Water tank

Solar panel for the pump