House of steel – the structure is done

You might remember that the Time Lord theme appeared in this blog previously, because of the weird clock system that twisted time during the development application process. Well it’s back again but this time in a good way. My little house reminds me of the Tardis in that it looks bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Not that I’m planning to go and paint it Police Box Blue, but you’ll see what I mean from the pictures below.

A very small and deceptively boring looking container house from the outside. Three white boxes. This is the south side, which has no windows. But wait, there’s more..

The core structure is all done, which includes the steel modifications and reinforcements, plus supply and installation of all the glazing. I went up to visit the containers all mocked-up into the shape of my house, and I’m totally chuffed with the light and spacious feel of it. The footprint on the ground is only 60m2 but it doesn’t feel that small due to two things: the decent amount of glass doors and windows; and also “The Void” – the 6m tall double-height ceiling section over the combined lounge/dining area. That design element has turned out to be a fine plan, it opens up the whole space. If you’re designing one of these container houses, I would highly recommend you include a Void if the budget allows. You lose some floor space but you also lose any potential for claustrophobia.

The dog, and “The Void” in the lounge/dining area. The two tall windows will face north, letting in some lovely warm sunlight in winter. The main view will be outside the 3.6m wide glass sliding doors to the right of the dog. Doors  and windows are all double glazed 6mm glass.

Looking back into the container house from the lounge/dining, Steve the engineer is standing in the kitchen, with the loft room above (no stairs to it yet). The bathroom will be up the far end past the kitchen. On the left near the larger windows (and view) is the office and then the main bedroom (which is more than one container wide). There is some temporary bracing in The Void which will be removed after transport.

View from upstairs in the loft, looking past the stair penetration back into The Void. I will be hanging some staggered chandeliers down through that space over the dining nook to make more of a feature of it. You can see all the steel stud framework in the walls which will support the plasterboard with spray foam behind it. Past the stair cut out at the base of this photo, the upstairs room is full width for about 3m and opens onto the upstairs deck.

It’s been a long and winding road to get to this point, a road that felt about the same length as the Eyre Highway (the longest road in Australia) but right now it was mostly worth it. The start of the quoting process by the container modification company, Port Shipping Containers, was way back in April 2016 and unlike the mind-numbingly straight Eyre Highway it has not been a simple or a predictable journey. There have been quite a few speed humps and potholes along the way. In fact occasionally the potholes got so big they reminded me of the giant ones you get in some places in Africa, where you need to drive off the road to get around them, or occasionally someone parks a truck in them so that you can use the truck roof as bridge to drive over the hole.

 

The western side of the house, with few windows to keep the heat out. The profile will be broken up by a lot of garden. It’s a big canvas waiting for cladding…

I am very glad this fabrication stage is nearly done. The house is looking fabulous and I’d love to just be happy with it and move to the next build phase; the finish looks great to me and the engineer I hired to inspect the steelwork seemed impressed with it. But there are still a few final things to sort out before the containers are ready for transport, including one more correction for Port Containers to do (moving a window) – and the end of this road is getting bumpy again.

I think the container company has had enough now too, they have had to fill in all those giant potholes and they say this job has come in at close to cost for them due to a range of errors they’ve had to remedy plus some unexpected developments. To their credit until now they have fixed every mistake and stuck to their quoted price (as they should) despite increased labour and material costs on their side. The main cost to me has been a lot of time, and a bit of sanity. However, there is increasing reluctance in the air from them now – I hope they hang in there, we are so near to the finish.

On the up side it is exciting to see a building come to life from my paper design, and I’m really pleased that it looks big enough to live in. The dog sure looks content in it. In fact he settled in right in front of where the fireplace will be. I am looking forward to seeing this structure tucked away in the garden on my mountain block.

The next step is organising delivery logistics, which is not so simple as I need a very clever truck driver to get these three large containers into my driveway, plus some smaller than average trucks. Whoever built my street forgot to make it full width, it’s more like a laneway, so the opposite neighbour’s garden is alarmingly close. After the delivery hurdle it is onto the fun stuff like electricals, plumbing, insulation, plasterboard, scavenging some recycled cabinetry and putting in my hobbitsy faux copper vintage/contemporary shower recess (which I have not built yet). And some stairs. Things will get very interesting when it comes to the interior…watch this space. Oh, and the exterior – the western side of the building is one big 6m x 12m canvas just waiting for an interesting cladding pattern.