The whole thing began when Calvin asked, sometime in 2019, “How about if we build a house out of shipping containers?” And Clay said, “OK.”
We have three-quarters of an acre, so there is plenty of room to go about a construction project while living in the existing house, patching it up as needed to keep it habitable. And when the container house is finished, we can then tear down the old one, or give it away, or set fire to it. (Such are the rules, or lack thereof, in unincorporated rural Mississippi. With the exception of the once- or twice-a-year Burn Bans lasting a day or so, you can pretty much burn whatever you want on your own property. The cavalier nature of building regulations—nonexistence is the more accurate way to put it—will play an important and ongoing part in this project.)
Southern Mississippi is hot and wet and can be hard on a house—wood rots faster here—and therein lay part of the appeal of a home made of steel. Rust and insulation would of course be concerns, but they seemed manageable.
Aside from the Cool Factor of living in a home made of shipping containers in a region not known for modern architecture, not to mention the Cool Factor of building it ourselves, the work is such that it can be done piecemeal as time and money permit.
In 2019, Clay took a government job in California, creating an inconvenience for a marriage but earning excellent benefits for the long term, including a pension that will one day supplement our Social Security income. It meant that work on the container would to a large extent take place by only one of us at a time, except for a few weeks a year when Clay could be in Mississippi while on vacation from his California job.