Many times, we find ourselves at a crossroads in life, although most people are just looking for a way to provide for their family, pursue their dreams, and flourish in society; that doesn’t always happen for all of us. Finding affordable and appropriate housing is one the most difficult aspects of modern living, not to mention one of the most expensive one as well.
For single mother of one, Lulu, it has been especially difficult. She has some money saved, but she knows she will have to make a choice between putting that money as maybe some sort of down payment towards a house or an apartment, and possibly ending up in the same place she is at now after a short period of time, or try to find an alternate way of taking care of that problem and at the same time investing some of that money in herself; and maybe try to help her grow professionally, so it is either ‘property or intellectual property’ , as she herself put it; for her the choice is obvious.
Lulu’s only experience in construction was from a long time ago, and it wasn’t in a house or an apartment, but on a boat. She remodeled a boat that she had back then and managed to get it functional, now getting on to building a house is something entirely different.
OK, so first step is looking for somewhere to live in, she tries looking for several options, none of which seem to work until she manages to get her hands on a shipping container that was used to ship things back and forth from the United States to China. She likes it, but she knows she will have to get very creative to get it to work for her and her daughter. But at least she doesn’t have to pay anything for it, it is free.
Besides getting all the construction permits for her to actually start any work on the house started, she needs to find affordable construction materials that she can actually use. The interior space is about 160 feet and that’s about it. She goes to the local junkyard to see what she can find and maybe refurbish, and she finds windows, flooring and the dressers.
Seeing that she was running out of space (not like she had that much space to begin with) she found a flatbed trailer that she repurposed and made it into a bedroom. She is now thinking of a way to build a greenhouse where she can grow many of the things she needs, and that she can use to connect the two areas of the house she has built. Talk about being creative, the result is something much more than just ingenious.
