I have a framer and his assistant working with me today. We spend the morning making a list of materials needed to finish framing out the entire building ($2,000 worth) and they finish the last bit of the beams and joists that are under the roof. They also discover that, while the back ends of…

Now that the containers are up on their blocks in the right places, it’s time to cut one side off of each of them. Plasma cutters are probably the easiest way, but the cheapest machine I can find is $1,000 and I’ve heard that welding of any sort can damage your eyes so that you…

I’m finding a common thread that runs through our project. The more flexibility you can maintain, the better off you are. The blocks are a good example. Another example is that as long as I’m doing all the work myself, everything is fine. As soon as somebody else gets involved I have a deadline to…

The property we purchased has an existing concrete foundation in the back. While it seems to be thick enough to build on, it isn’t raised above grade level at all so water accumulates. It also has some cracks that obviously go all the way through it, so we’ve determined that we’re better off not relying…

This project is the first I’ve ever worked on where I set out to do everything the “right” way, instead of the easy or fastest or cheapest way. We’ve hired an engineer to make sure everything is built to code. We’re working with the city to get necessary permits, etc. Initially, there was a temptation…

In the middle of February, 2008 we bought our first two containers from Advance Container for $1,100 each, plus delivery. They were delivered to the front of our driveway, which is about 250 feet from where they needed to be. This being a very low-budget operation, I used the Egyptian method of moving big, heavy…

I’m a graphic designer and my wife is an artist. We’ve lived in the San Francisco Bay area, Oxford, England, Austin, Texas, New York City, and Houston, Texas. Of all the great places we’ve lived, Houston is where we’ve decided to finally settle down. It’s unmatched for the warmth of the people, the vibrant art…

The first step, of course, was to figure out where the money would come from. We found that almost any kind of financing was out of the question because the mortgage used to purchase the house and land “encumbered” the entire property. Nobody was going to give us a loan for something that they couldn’t…