Industrial Country Market

The Industrial Country Market is a very neat place to visit. It is not too far from Austin and they have some wonderful things planned out there! Dan and Michele were very gracious to share their place with us for the Solar Seminar. The ICM is still a work in progress, but we look forward to visiting again soon to see how they've come along!

Solar Seminar here we come!

This Saturday, we are attending "The Energy Game: A Solar Seminar" at the Industrial Country Market in Columbus, TX (we think it's near Giddings). We are very excited not only for the seminar, but also to see the market. It is a brand new destination that is self declared as a "commercial and educational facility sustained by sun, wind and rain."

Learn more about the Industrial Country Market here: http://www.icm71.com/Industrial_Country_Market/index.html

We'll keep you posted on what we learn at the seminar!

We broke ground! ... Well, sort of...

Since our house doesn't require a traditional foundation, we spent this past weekend building molds to make our own custom cement blocks for the container to sit on. We could have taken the easy route and just used cinder blocks, but we wanted to get a little more creative and design our own. We came up with an idea to incorporate planters into some of the blocks. We are planning on having bright and colorful plants in these because, after all, the little details are what matters!

In the meantime...

...We have been working on our garden as a way of starting our journey of becoming self sufficient.

It's not mature enough for an entire fresh meal, yet, but so far our garden has given us tomatoes, peppers, egg plants, artichokes, broccoli, okra, watermelon, and basil.

We also have 2 figs, 2 Japanese persimmons, 2 sentinel peaches, 2 loquats, 1 key lime, and 1 meyer lemon.

We can't wait to cook up a delicious meal made entirely from our garden!

Patience is key.

Since we don't have a shipping container (quite yet) that we can work with, we have spent lots of time sketching out floor plans.

Sketch after sketch, idea after idea, this is what we have finally come up with... for now. :)

Working everything you need into 320 square feet proves to be a very difficult task! You start to ask yourself, "well do I really need this?" or "do we really need that?" Having time to work out every detail in your head before you have to do it in reality is, actually, a blessing. As much as we want instant gratification and to have the shipping container in front of us right now, we realize that having patience and thinking things out 100% before hand is going to be key.

Did you say shipping container?!?

You might ask yourself, "why a shipping container?"

Well, believe it or not, there are actually some good reasons to make your home out of a shipping container. For starters, they come in several different lengths ranging from 10 ft. to 53 ft. (with 20ft. and 40ft. being the most common). Another perk is the hicube option. This means that you have an extra foot of height on your container (9ft. 6in. rather than the standard 8ft. 6in.). For our purposes, we have chosen a 40ft. hicube... Well, at least for now. Jory is determined to one day live in a 20 footer, but we'll just have to see about that! Ha!

Here are some other great reasons to use a shipping container:

• Supply: Due to the trade deficit with China, there are hundreds of thousands of used containers clogging American ports. So, why not do the "green thing" and at least incorporate a unique structure into your home?
  
• Cost: A 40ft. shipping container (that has only been shipped once) costs anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000 depending on condition, configuration, etc. In the grand scheme of things, that's pretty darn cheap!
  
• Strength: Shipping containers are nearly indestructible. Think about it, they survive long voyages on the open seas.
  
• Portability: Let's put it this way, if you ever get tired of your surroundings, all you have to do is seal up your container and move it to a new location (albeit with some minor shipping fees).

The most important reasons (at least to us) to make a shipping container our home are the unlimited possibilities of creativity, design, and sustainability.

After all, we see this as a livable sculpture. The possibilities are endless!

Living outside the box, in.

Yes, you heard that right. We have been searching for the perfect design for our home, and after countless ideas, we finally decided to live in a 3,040 cubic foot box. That is approximately 320 square feet.

It has been Jory's dream for many years to design and build a micro-home that is off the grid and sustainable. On top of that, he is determined to do it all by himself... well... most of it anyway. So... here we go!

This is the story of our adventure of creating a home out of a box.