Are Shipping Containers Becoming the Ultimate DIY Home?

Image courtesy of Homedit.com

We often talk about doing DIY inside the home on this blog, after all part of our passion is finding new tips and tricks to complete all those DIY jobs that seem to appear on a constant never-ending basis. However, what about DIY that would encompass your entire home?

In other words, building a new home for yourself is one giant DIY project, although the ‘Yourself’ part of it would probably be hard if you were trying to build an entire brick and mortar home entirely by yourself. You’d need to hire people who were knowledgeable about various aspects of home building; such as architects, plumbers, electricians and more. As much as we’d love to learn everything, unfortunately there isn’t nearly enough time in the world. Even if you did know a bit about everything, it would no doubt turn out quite the disaster and would probably take decades to complete anyway! So, is there an easy way to get your own DIY home without spending a fortune on planning, building and everything else? Surprisingly, yes, but that’s if you don’t mind living in a shipping container.

The fact is new homes can take quite a while to build, and with little space and money seemingly available these days those new homes may not even exist in the first place. Fortunately people are looking into more diverse ways of betting the housing crisis, coming up with new unique ways to design houses while also cutting costs and building times. Homes made from shipping containers is one such idea, taking the concept of recycling to a whole new level by utilising the over 300 million empty shipping containers just sitting there doing nothing in homes around the world. Using them for emergency housing is really a no brainer, but would you live in one?

Obviously you’re not going to be just sitting on a cold metal floor, these shipping containers end up being fully transformed into homes that have all the modern conveniences of your average brick and mortar home. The beauty in using shipping containers is their adaptability, they can be slotted and linked together to create intriguing home shapes that really stand out from what can often be a street full of identical looking homes. It doesn’t have to be a tiny home either, check out this luxurious and spacious Californian home that is made out of 8 shipping containers linked together. A lot of the time homes won’t look anything like they’re made up of containers that used to travel halfway around the world, just take a look at this one for instance.

Moreover, shipping containers can provide housing for the homeless or people who are struggling to survive in their current homes. This will obviously require input from local authorities, as well as private construction, but it may just be the answer to the shortage of housing that is only going to get worse as the population grows and gets older.

Of course, you can’t just plonk a few shipping containers down on some land and call it a home. Local planning regulations need to be abided by, and getting permission for such a thing might be quite tough. However, given that it’s all about making cuts to save money these days I believe that the authorities will eventually come around to the idea of unique ways to build housing, which will hopefully lead to a greener and sustainable future.

So, you’re probably still going to need a bit more than a few power tools and a screwdriver, but shipping containers may be the answer to an affordable home that won’t take long to build and can be customised to suit your needs in a variety of unique ways.