The Adventure Begins

As a child, I loved The Boxcar Children books by Gertrude Chandler Warner. I used to fantasize about creating a home out of a boxcar. Now that fantasy is about to become reality. My husband and I are about to embark on an adventure that I never dreamed would come true. We are going to be 'boxcar' children.

We have been exploring ways to build a house that we could afford. My husband has many years experience in construction and he is also an engineer so we were looking for something that we could do ourselves. One day we were discussing ideas for building a house and we came across several images of homes that had been built out of shipping containers and thought, "We can do this." We began exploring the possibilities and started saving up for the containers.

Our plan is to use six shipping containers to create our home. We have spent the last several weeks working on the layout so that we would be ready when the containers are delivered. We are hoping for delivery by the end of this week.

House layout

The main part of the house (left side of picture) will be constructed from two 8' x 40' containers put together. This will be our master bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen. We will use two more 8' x 40' containers (bottom of picture) attached perpendicularly to create a family room, laundry room, bathroom, and guest room. the other two 8' x 40' units will be split in half to create bedrooms for our children. We will also have a 24' x  40' courtyard in the middle which will create an outside living space.

It's going to be an exciting adventure. I can't wait to fulfill my childhood fantasy of living in a boxcar.