New container house project

This as been in the works for a few months, but now that things are moving forward, it seemed like the time to start documenting it. This will be container house 2.0 for me. I said I would not do another container project as extensive as the house, but might consider a smaller scale project for something like a vacation house. Here it is. I am mostly putting progress with the main house on hold for a while to focus on this one. I have always been mostly comfortable living in the smaller footprint of the first floor of the current build, so there is no immediate need to continue building it out.

For years I had been looking for property around Lake Livingston, even making an offer on a couple of places that fell through. In December 2020, I found a small beach cottage style house on the water in a small community. I put in an offer and thought it would go through, but kind of got played by the realtor. They used my offer to raise another they had. After they accepted the other offer, I found a vacant lot and thought of the possibilities. I was going to have to put money into the cottage to fix it up, so what if I could increase my budget and build something instead? My wheels were turning and I began a design for feasibility. They later came back to me, by the way, and said the original offer fell through. They wanted me to go through with my offer they declined. I had to decide to go back to the purchase / rehab or move forward with the design / build. I decided on the latter, partly because building my own will likely be more rewarding and partly because I didn’t want to reward them for playing games.

Designing the new container house was the easy part. I had done that before. Budgeting was a little more difficult because I am planning for things that I have never dealt with – septic and elevation changes. And what ended up being the most complicated part so far has been the septic system, more so finding someone to agree to install it. I don’t have any experience with them since I have never had a septic system, but because this property is waterfront, they are much more highly regulated. Only certain installers are approved to install them on the lakefront properties. This limits who can do them, but with many of them backed up with work, they can be choosey about the work they do. Couple that with the elevation changes on this particular property, and finding someone to do this work has been a much longer process than originally anticipated. That seems to be worked out now, so permitting and then construction can now actually begin.

I had several companies take a look at the site. In order to get a company to agree to do the septic system, it seemed like I had to get the property cleaned up. It was always planned, but I didn’t realize I’d need to push that to the front of the list. Even finding someone to clean it up was a challenge. Years of neglect and overgrown underbrush with the fairly substantial elevation change meant that several companies just turned down the work. I can visualize what the end result will be, but many people can’t. Substantial elevation changes in this part of the state are not very common, so with all of these things being the reality of this property, it reinforced the need to use containers to basically drop the structure of the house into place onto piers. With proper planning, that can be done in a single day. Remember that I stacked 11 containers in Houston in one day.

I have a little bit of a head start when it comes to the containers. One that we purchased for work several years ago is no longer needed. I plan on moving it, although retrieving it will be challenging. I will be able to integrate it into the design even though it isn’t exactly what I would have chosen had it not already been owned. Already having it to use will help defray the cost of the other containers that have gone up significantly in price since I did the original house. It will also give me the extra space that the neighborhood requires on interior square footage for new construction. And having the roll up door already in it will let me use that part as an indoor / outdoor room. I will be able to roll up the door, expand the size of the living room that it ultimately adjoins, and have a sort of game room area on the first floor.

This post will mostly be the before construction pictures. The lot has been cleaned up now and essential services put in place. As construction really begins, I will try to update on the actual container aspects of the build. I plan to use the tools and learned items from the original house on this project and ideally make it even better.