This here is our new second micro shipping container! It's eight foot by five foot by seven
foot. We purchased the first one earlier this spring from a small amish auction to use as a tool
shed on our land. We'd been looking at pre-made wood sheds in our area and couldn't find any for
less than $4,000! Huge! It's a mansion in here! So we thought instead about building our own but
wood prices are still astronomical, this lounge chair cost me over two hundred dollars remember?
And this container while small is lockable, it's breaking proof and rodent proof on the inside
and for $1,500 delivered we felt that it was a pretty good deal for what we needed it for.
Barron and I work from our computers. For the last five years in the scamp we've tried
a number of methods to make computer work a little bit easier and slightly more ergonomic,
but the truth is, without a table and a chair, working from our laptops has
not been very good for our productivity or for our posture. One afternoon, we got the
idea to buy a second micro shipping container and attempt to turn it into an office space!
Over at our neighbors James and Doreen's, we brought up the idea. James with nearly
50 years of carpentry experience and a shop containing more specialized tools than Home Depot
convinced us that with his help, the idea was totally possible so we pulled the trigger!
We had a rough idea of what we wanted to do. Cut a big window and create a thin table running the
length of the container, giving just enough room for both of us to work inside on our laptops.
Of course James had a much better design in mind. He suggested that we make a four
foot table with three feet of it extending outside of the container with glass panels seated at an
angle on the table. This would nearly double our space inside the container! He also insisted
that we make our own door because it'd be way cooler than leaving the existing metal doors.
James and Doreen have a long history of building their homes workshops and barns.
They purchase truckloads of dried logs like these, maneuver them with a skid steer and cut
all of their wood to size on their mill for any given project they happen to be working on.
Throughout our project whenever we needed any wood we came outside and cut the exact dimensions
we needed from these big logs, bolstering the idea that we have got to get a mill of our own.
That's great!
The reason we officially said "okay let's send this container office idea" was because James
and Doreen were getting ready to spray foam the inside of the bus they're renovating to live in
and offered to let us spray foam our container at the very same time, which never could have
happened otherwise because the spray foam company wouldn't have ever come just out to us for such a
small job. James sandblasted the container to give the phone something to grip too.
There are a number of different insulation options that we were considering for this project
but spray foam was very much available, it's very effective
and it worked really well with the uneven walls of the container.
And just like that, the insulation was done. It was very quick for them to spray but the cleanup
and detail work did and would continue to take a long time. We decided to leave most of this
texture because we kind of liked it but we covered it up later anyway and we didn't want to lose
what little insulation we had, about two to three inches. I did do a little cleanup along the floor
and it was a very messy job. It sticks to you via static electricity which is profoundly annoying.
The table was my very favorite part of this whole project. So just kind of like a stain?
Just dab that whole thing in there. Okay so no big deal? There's nothing picky about it.
This is what it looked like after just one coat, but i think i did five
total. Next it was time to begin the rather extensive process of creating the door.
You're putting your hand down as you go, just kind of hold it like this and let this hand be
your guide. You see what I'm doing? And this is actually your guide here and this is your power.
For the record i got a little bit better at this as time went on.
A very useful tip that james taught me was the biggest thing you got to
do to make wood furniture look finished is to sand the edges.
Wow!
James tacked some plastic around the table to weatherproof it so that we could bring it home
and finish the interior while we waited for the glass panels to be cut.
He's purring! Of course he is! This is a great uber! I've never been an uber before!
We picked a spot on the very highest point of our land to place the office.
James leveled the area and very carefully bonked the container up the hill on his skid steer.
And then the hard work began.. and I only say that because the construction part seemed to be
pretty easy and maybe that's because James was doing the majority of the work, but truly the
detail work was a very hard job. I sealed the exterior wood the same way as I did the table
and we painted the inside foam with a uv protected paint to preserve it. Again, we didn't want to cut
any of this back because we wanted to keep as much of that insulation as possible, but that amount of
texture ate up two entire gallons of paint and two entire days of our time. Wow looks good!
We picked up the metal flashing and the glass panels for the windows from a local amish company.
Thick glass! It's dual pane. Cool wow!
Install day was really exciting, it was kind of what we'd been waiting for the whole time
to finally see that epic view out of our office window.
But it became a little sad and a lot stressful when the first glass panel cracked.
The moment was really intense so i didn't want to focus on filming the crack too much
but it's very much there from the left side all the way to the right side of the panel.
But thankfully none of the other panels cracked on install. It's not too terribly noticeable
but we will have to replace it to prevent water and debris from getting inside. Are you good with
that? Yeah we just put a little wedge of wood in there. It's kind of bad luck but that's life.
This is so cool.
Okay so here's the floor and because the spray
foam is not straight our panels will not be straight.
I thought this would be a fun part but this has been the worst part.
It was quite a painful process installing these vinyl plank floorboards only because the tongue
and grooves on the planks were so fragile. It took us half the floor to figure out how to do it
and the other half of the floor wouldn't fit along the grooves of the spray foam,
but after some cutting and shaving we made it work. Oh how was that one so easy, the final one!
That was so much more of a pain than i thought it was gonna be!
I would not recommend! This stuff was just built like garbage! Cool beans man!
It's getting closer!
Big thanks to Goal Zero who kindly hooked us up with some batteries for this office.
We are entirely off grid out here so this is awesome and very necessary.
They're really quite durable batteries
and we're really excited to have the system in the future to wheel around a garage for power tools
and the like. I don't want to wheel it off-road. This here is the yeti 3000 x lithium battery.
We copied this door handle idea from James and Doreen of course.
These antlers we found on our land. This small one actually somebody left for us,
thank you so much to that kind person, you know who you are... and we don't!
And with a few more finishing touches we finally have an off-grid office!
After five years of tiny living, we have a table and chairs! This is luxury, I tell you what!
Unending thanks to James and Doreen who you will definitely be seeing more of in future videos.
What do you guys think of the office? Do you want a more detailed tour? What else do you think we
should add? Let us know in the comments and while you're down there give this video a thumbs up and
subscribe if you haven't because we are looking forward to a very exciting off-grid winter ahead.
Thanks for watching and we'll see you in the next one!