hey guys jenna here welcome to my channel where i take you on tours of tiny
and unique homes in today's video we're traveling to albuquerque to meet leah
and mike and take a tour of their backyard shipping container home in this video we're
going to learn about some of the benefits of doing a shipping container home as a backyard
adu and leah is going to take us on a tour of the space explaining all of the interior design
elements that she implemented to make the space seem bigger and more livable if you like these
kind of videos make sure that you subscribe and hit that notification bell because i publish
one to two new video tours every single week and you're going to want to know about it
alright guys let's take a tour of this gorgeous backyard shipping container home
hey i'm leah and i'm mike and we're excited to show you our container casita
we lived in new york city and got to really experience sort of a communal type of living
smaller spaces and that really appealed to me after living in the rat race the big cities
we decided that we wanted to maybe slow down a little bit about that time i was diagnosed
with endometriosis which is a chronic illness that impacts millions of women
one of the things that i realized as i'm you know
adjusting to my new normal is that a nine to five is really going to be difficult for me
what could i do to support myself but that's flexible enough for me to be able to take off
maybe two months to have a surgery and recover having been airbnb hosts before it became a way
for me to use my skills and talents as a designer bring in some income have it pay for itself
on our lot we have a small adobe home that was existing
when we bought it and then the shipping container so we'll have the container we'll
use it for short-term rental to recoup the cost of the build and then when we
are ready to renovate and update our older adobe home we'll have a space that we can live in
i wanted to give her a means to do whatever she wanted really i wanted her to be able to
dream big and bring it to life i wanted to be able to
let this be something that i could manage with a chronic illness and it's something
that gives me a lot of flexibility but makes us self-sufficient which was very appealing to us
we're near old town which is the historic heart of albuquerque it's the most kind of vibrant
lively area so we did have to get a special zoning approval
which we had to present to the neighborhood association
we had to make sure that we were going to blend in with our surrounding environment
we bought the container from a local company for six thousand
we had our doors and windows shipped to them and they cut and welded and installed all of
our doors and windows we had to pour a foundation as per the city of albuquerque's requirements it's
not necessary for a container but that's what we had to do they set up a big crane basically just
picked it up and plopped it down and then we had it welded to some anchors that we sunk into the
foundation and you know i thought it was going to take like a whole day or something but it really
took like 45 minutes it was pretty impressive the grand total ish is somewhere between 60 and 65 000
we went with a 40 foot long high cube we decided to keep the color that it came with this is a
new cube basically it made one trip it didn't really have too much in the way of like rust or
or dents or dings we basically just stripped off the stickers and are using it as is
we really wanted to utilize as much of the outdoor space as we could
we have beautiful weather here in new mexico most of the year we have lights
and some cozy chairs and we actually have our dining table out here we don't have
space for a full table but you can still dine out here most of the time relaxing hammock area
it's just nice to have a little private spot right in the middle of old town for the windows in the
shipping container i feel like any small space the more you have the better it is the bigger it feels
but i wanted to be conscientious we're in a desert climate we get harsh sun high temperatures we have
four windows in total three of them are on the east side so we get nice morning light but not the
harsh afternoon desert sun it's really efficient we heat it and cool it with a mini split unit
and that's worked out great so far one cool thing about a shipping container is they come with these
big doors a lot of people put big glass doors or something like that but for us we utilized it
as the back of our bathroom so we house all of our plumbing in here and a cool feature
is that if anything ever goes wrong we can just swing this open and the plumber can get right in
so for the doors on the container i wanted to
do some french doors i did full glass panels which brings in a ton of natural light and we have the
awning which was fabricated by the shipping container company and installed which was
great and easy they swing out so they're nice and covered from protected from weather
but it really increases the indoor outdoor feel of this whole space
welcome to the inside of our container casita it's 320 square feet 40 feet long and
just under 8 feet wide it seems like it would be a small space but i think it feels really nice
this is our kitchenette the city required that we were only able to do a kitchenette but i
think that's fine we got plenty of space and we can pretty much do anything we want to do
i wanted this to feel like a piece of furniture because this is one big open room and i didn't
want it to scream kitchen i happened to find this at a vintage shop locally in albuquerque and i did
a few things to retrofit it we put a honed granite top on it so you can cook clean very durable we
have all the kinds of storage trash cans whatever you need lots of room but it still feels nice
and open doesn't take up the whole space i went with a super sleek super modern faucet
but i found the deepest bar sink that i could most large regular standards kitchen sinks would not
fit in it i think it fits the bill perfectly it's just narrow enough for this tight space
one of the pieces that i found was a vintage tv armoire which kind of sounds strange but it
actually works out great one of the cool things is that the doors completely recess so you don't lose
any functionality it's actually counter height we house all the silverware dishes everything's
in here the whole kitchen's in here we cut out a hole to access some power so everything just plugs
in nice and easy and this is going to work great for us for now we have a great little apartment
sized retro fridge that fits the bill and that's it so here we are in our full bathroom at the end
of the casita we did a couple space saving things here few tips might be kind of interesting for
other tiny house folks we have a dual flush toilet but the thing that's great about this toilet has a
really slim profile tank so it doesn't take up a ton of room we also went with a really small
sink vanity saves a lot of floor space with these really small sinks typically american faucets are
too big so you might want to try looking for some european faucets which is what i did and it fits
great it doesn't splash water everywhere which is one of my pet peeves one of my big things is
a deep tub i sourced the deepest tub i could find i didn't really want to make a lot of sacrifices
when i'm living tiny we have rain shower hand shower luxurious soaking tub what's not to love
so here we are in the living room of our container casita we have these big french doors that are
great they open right out we have a lot of local art which new mexico is famous for
this is a local albuquerque artist robin frank it's really cool print and this is a las cruces
artist caroline clark she does some really cool really fun pixelated like landscapes
and stuff in albuquerque the heart of the city is central avenue also known as route 66
and we're just a block off of it so this is my neon light sculpture it's an homage to route 66.
we did this custom shelf up high which is kind of cool we have it set up with our wi-fi system if
you're looking into building a shipping container or if you already have one you know it's tricky
with metal buildings we went with a mesh system and we have a receiver in our main house and we
have a receiver here and it works great we also have this up high because we designed it this
way to house a projector when you close these you can prop up a screen and you have like great movie
night if you don't want to set up a projector we hung this really sleek little frame tv which is
nice it doesn't project out at all so you can watch the news or whatever above that we have
the mini split which is the air conditioning and the heating for the whole unit and it works great
welcome to our big bedroom in our tiny casita i really wanted to have a king-size bed and if you
are aware of the dimensions of shipping containers that's pretty much the whole space
so i figured i would make it the statement i hired a local woodworker and we designed this
bed i kind of wanted to go big and tall and make a big impact it's full of storage underneath we have
drawers for shoes and even deep storage that you can access by moving the mattress for
you know seasonal stuff i have these really cool flip down
night stands they have a plug you can put your water you can put your phone
being able to do this kind of gave me the avenue to design what i wanted to design i got to
spread my wings and do exactly what i wanted it's a way to build herself back up after
everything that's happened last five years she's way more confident now than she was a couple of
years ago and this whole thing was a huge part of that she needed an opportunity to do something
on the scale but you're not beautiful because she's good at what she does
i wanted to give back to her more than anything
thanks for watching this week's video please make sure to like share and subscribe
and i will see you soon with a brand new unique home tour