Welcome to fortyfooter.com – Thinking inside the box


Thursday, 7 July 2011

Inspired by...

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Thursday, July 07, 2011 in ,

We've been asked several times what our container house would look like. Well, here's the answer: super-funky-über-cool and full of awesomeness!
Here are just a few links to sites that inspire us and that go beyond the usual temporary-office-look that container houses are often associated with. There's heaps more out there and we'll add to the list as we go, but we also don't want to simply copy other people's designs and ideas but create our own nest-version.

Architects Fulton + Salomon
My Home in a Box
Big Boom Blog

    The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.

    Mat & Candy

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    Monday, 4 July 2011

    And then there were two

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    Monday, July 04, 2011 in ,

    The second forty-footer arrived early on Monday morning. Things are easy when you have a truck, a crane and a tractor on hand to shift the 4-ton boxes around. The new container also had our order of steel in it which came straight from Nelson and saved us some coin on shipping it from elsewhere.

    The new container was lifted from the delivery truck onto the ground before being pushed into its position by Jim and his favourite toy.

    Dale guiding the container into its position


    Jim makes it look easy

    Then, the container that had arrived earlier in the weekend and was sitting in the paddock was lifted up again and put next to its friend.

    Airborne


    Good fun on a sunny winters day

    Things went smoothly thanks to our expert helpers. There were a few scary moments...or at least I thought there were: when the container almost touched the power line, or when the container almost hit the crane. Almost.

    But all went well and our containers are now waiting for us to transform them into our new home.

    Mat supervising the progress


    Stay tuned :)

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    Sunday, 3 July 2011

    The adventure begins

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    Sunday, July 03, 2011 in ,

    Finally, our first container arrived this weekend, and judging by the noise outside the second one is on its way as I'm typing this. Gotta go...

    A crane was hired to lift the box off the truck


    False alarm!
    The fuss outside was due to Mat trialing his sledgehammer against the bare metal of our steel box. Thanks to the current exposed location of the container the sound echoes for miles. I better get used to it.

    So this is where we're at: we've ordered two high-cube 40-foot shipping containers back in March which now have made their way safely to Golden Bay, our home. One red box will be converted into a 2-bedroom plus bathroom space while the other one will provide the main living quarters (living room, kitchen and office).

    Looks impressive

    In the coming weeks, we'll start cutting out the long side of the first container and begin customising the design to fit our needs. Most of the work will be done by us (my husband, I should say) and the design has been brewing in Mat's head ever since he was 15 years old.... so a lot of thinking went into it! We'll be documenting the building progress on this blog and invite people to follow it and comment. I'll try to take decent photos along the way (to my best abilities) to illustrate the journey. Enjoy!

    Mat & Candy

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