Daddy's Door

We had to say good bye recently to a special part of our house.

Daddy made the door when he built our first dividing wall. I remember being so excited to finally have a door that can be fully closed.

I LOVED our dutch door.

The top half could be opened independently of the bottom half. With the bottom of the door closed and the top swung open, I could keep toddlers from escaping and still let in a good breeze. I often leaned on the bottom half of the door while chatting with a visitor or checking on the children.

In the summer we found out pretty quickly that open doors mean bugs. Bugs in your kitchen.

So we put up a large piece of mosquito netting to keep the airflow and at least discourage the flying bugs.

But with the installation of electricity came the decision to air condition our home. And our beautiful dutch door was NOT going to keep cool air in and hot muggy air out.

Not just that – but our new location had so many more species of insects. SO many bugs.

So we grabbed a storm door on craigslist and made the swap.

It actually modernized the look of our home. We went from Little House to Southern Porch in an afternoon. And YES, we kept the door for a future project.

Growing up, my mom had the front door open every day. All day. Rain or shine. The glass storm door was always there - just to keep the bugs out and the air conditioning in - but it wasn’t unusual to hear that door open and spring shut fifty times a day. It somehow extended our home’s square footage to include the entire front yard.

Over the past few years as I greatly encourage the children to spend most of their day outside, I see where our door is serving that same purpose. It’s not a barrier to the outside world, locking us in and blocking the outdoors. It’s a diving board for today’s next adventure. And thankfully, a much needed expansion to our small home.

Our Story

     Six months after we were married my husband and I moved into the 8 x 48 foot shipping container we began affectionately calling, “The Box.” It had previously transported tires, smelled like hay bales, and was a generous gift from a parent.

     We had it delivered to our new place in the middle of a field, rented a moving van to haul all of our stuff from our modest 700 sq. ft. apartment to our new 384 sq. ft. home, and with the help of some neighbors, we spent our first night there on a mattress on the floor, surrounded by all of our stuff.

     Our new home looked like the inside of the moving van we had just packed and unpacked. It had tall metal walls, a wooden floor, and visible rivets and steel frame. We’d brought our garage sale couch, inherited kitchen table, donated queen bed, and a bunch of packrat-style boxes from our previous dwelling, and that made things seem a bit more like a home, but I have to say it looked a whole lot like we were now living inside somebody’s storage unit!

     We could enter and exit our new place through the large double doors on one side. But once we got indoors, we could not fully close the big doors from the inside. I started the first cold January night in our box with a new bedtime prayer. “Please Lord, don’t let a snake, skunk, raccoon, ’possum, bat, or other stray animal waltz into our new home while we are asleep!”

     Within the next few months my husband installed a few storm windows, and put up an interior wall with a big hinged dutch door. He built this five feet past the container’s opening so that we could have a normal sized door to open and close (to keep critters out), and have a small porch area we could store our tools and mud boots in. We call this room the mudroom.

     Next was another interior wall that portioned off the back half of the container for a bedroom. Once the bedroom was completed it really did feel just like a home! (And it still does. ;))

     Over time we also installed basic solar electricity and lights, an off-grid sink, propane stove, wood stove, basic cabinetry, and many, many, many shelves!

     Fast forward over five years and we decided to move. What do container homeowners do when it’s time to leave? Take our home with us! After some careful planning and packing, we moved the container to our new location and moved all of our things back inside (no, we didn’t have the option of using our house as the moving van!).

     And now that we’ve settled in a bit, it is time to show people the story we should have been sharing all along! We have made container home living WORK as a no-mortgage way to live comfortably.  We haven’t stacked four containers or put on an addition (yet!). We didn’t hire an architect or do an expensive designer remodeling job just to make it livable. We only added simple elements to the original design of the container to make it a home. It is possible to transform a shipping container into a functional home with very few modifications.

     We have lived in this shipping container as newlyweds, and as parents of 1, 2, 3, and 4 children. We've lived in the dry plains region, and in the lush piney woods. We've been off-grid community members, and family farm tenants. We don’t plan to live in it our entire lives, but “The Box” is our home, and so far it has served us well. Thanks for taking a look at our journey. I hope you’ll follow us.

     -Carol

The Shipping Container Family